00:32
Tieng Anh Vui
Radioactive water has leaked from a storage tank into the ground at Japan's Fukushima plant, its operator says.
Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said the leak of at least 300 tonnes of the highly radioactive water was discovered on Monday.
The plant, crippled by the earthquake and tsunami in 2011, has seen a series of water leaks and power failures.
The tsunami knocked out cooling systems to the reactors, three of which melted down.
An employee discovered the leak on Monday morning, Tepco said in a statement.
Officials described the leak as a level-one incident - the lowest level - on an international scale that measures nuclear events.
This is the first time that Japan has declared such an event since the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, however.
A puddle of the contaminated water was emitting 100 millisieverts an hour of radiation, Kyodo news agency said, exceeding the maximum yearly dose allowed for a nuclear worker in Japan.
"We have instructed Tepco to find the source of contaminated water - from which tank the water is leaking - and to seal the leakage point," a regulatory official told Agence-France Presse news agency.
"We have also instructed them to retrieve contaminated soil to avoid a further expansion of toxic water, and to strengthen monitoring of the surrounding environment."
No major changes in radiation levels outside the plant have been observed so far, the official added.
The incident comes days after Tepco admitted that as much as 300 tonnes of contaminated water a day was leaking from the damaged reactor buildings to the sea.
Water is being pumped into the reactors, after cooling systems were knocked out by the tsunami.
Đăng ký: Tieng Anh Vui
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