Japan radioactive leak 'bigger than revealed'

A top power company official defended safety standards at an earthquake-ravaged Japanese nuclear plant today, even as the company said a radioactive leak was bigger than reported.

A leak of radioactive water into the Sea of Japan was actually 50% bigger than announced on Monday night. But the levels were still well below danger, officials said.

The mayor of nearby Kashiwazaki city ordered the facility to be shut down until its safety can be confirmed, escalating the showdown over a long list of problems at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, the world’s largest in terms of power output capacity.

The International Atomic Energy Agency meanwhile pressed Japan to undertake a transparent and thorough investigation of the accidents to see if there are lessons that can be applied to nuclear plants elsewhere in the world.

Adding to the urgency was new data from aftershocks of Monday’s deadly 6.8-magnitude quake suggesting a fault line may run underneath the mammoth power plant.

Tsunehisa Katsumata, president of plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., visited the site this morning, declaring it “a mess.” His company had released a list of dozens of problems triggered by the quake.

A tour later given to Japan’s Communist Party chief, Kazuo Shii, and a handful of reporters revealed widespread damage across its sprawling compound, including large cracks in roads, toppled concrete fences and buckled sidewalks.

Repair workers climbed over a three-storey transformer building, which was charred from top to bottom in a fire that burned for two hours on Monday.

“This is unforgivable,” Shii told TEPCO Deputy Superintendent Masakazu Minamidate. “You say there’s no leak before you really know. … The delay in information was especially inexcusable.”

Katsumata earlier apologised for “all the worry and trouble we have caused.”

“It is hard to make everything go perfectly,” he said. “We will conduct an investigation from the ground up. But I think fundamentally we have confirmed that our safety measures worked.”

TEPCO, Japan’s largest power company, said the quake was stronger than planned for at the seven-reactor plant in the northern prefecture of Niigata. But none of the problems posed serious threats to people or the environment, it said. Still, the plant suffered a fire, broken pipes, water leaks and spills of radioactive waste.