Radioactive water at 5 million times legal limit

THE operator of Japan’s crippled nuclear power plant said it had found water with five million times the legal limit of radioactivity as it struggles for a fourth week to contain the world’s biggest nuclear disaster in quarter of a century.

Underlining the concern over spreading radiation, the government said it was considering imposing radioactivity restrictions on seafood for the first time in the crisis after contaminated fish were found in seas well south of the damaged nuclear reactors.

The plant’s operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) offered token “condolence” money to those affected in the Fukushima region where the plant is based. The local mayors who came to Tokyo to meet Prime Minister Naoto Kan made clear they expected far more help.