Contaminated water in the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl is leaking from a storage tank at Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant.
The storage tank breach of about 300 tons of water is separate from contaminated water leaks reported in recent weeks, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co said on Tuesday.
The latest leak, which is continuing, is so contaminated that a person standing 50 centimeters (1.6 feet) away would, within an hour, receive a radiation dose five times the average annual global limit for nuclear workers.
After 10 hours, a worker in that proximity to the leak would develop radiation sickness with symptoms including nausea and a drop in white blood cells.
"That is a huge amount of radiation. The situation is getting worse," said Michiaki Furukawa, who is professor emeritus at Nagoya University and a nuclear chemist
That's the problem with so many of these things. The problems fall out of the news, but the harm they do lingers on, poisoning the water.
A South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman confirmed on Tuesday media reports that Seoul had asked Japanese officials to publicly explain what they were doing to stop contaminated water reaching the Pacific Ocean and valuable fishing grounds.
"Tepco and the government must come up with ways to stop the leaks as well as to monitor and analyze how much and what sort of radiation is entering the ocean, as well as the affect it is having on fish and sea plants," Furukawa said.
I don't know what to suggest. I miss having hope.
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Tired of politics? Need to escape? Try one of my Greek-mythology based novels, either the story of Jocasta: The Mother-Wife of Oedipus or a trilogy about Niobe, or one of the first examples of civil disobedience, Antigone and Creon. Or, if you like mysteries and/or Jane Austen, treat yourself to The Highbury Murders: A Mystery Set in the Village of Jane Austen’s Emma very positively reviewed at the Daily Kos Monday Murder Mystery blog.