Japan struggles to cool nuclear reactors as radioactive water leaks

For days already, Engineers have been frantically attempting to pump out puddles of radioactive water at the earthquake-crippled complex on Saturday, which exposed three workers to such a high level of radioactivity that they had to be hospitalised for radiation burns.

Al Jazeera reports that efforts to cool "hot" fuel rods are facing problems. Officials are concerned that the salt from the sea water may be encrusting on the fuel rods themselves, therefore rendering the cooling situation useless, Al Jazeera reports. Officials now intend to change tactics and pumping fresh water into those reactors instead.

USnaval barges loaded with fresh water are being rushed toward the overheated nuclear plant.

Yoshimi Kitazawa, Japan's defense minister, saidthe US was sending the load to the nearby Onahama Bay and would begin water injections early next week.

In the meantime, the disaster’s overall death toll passed 10,000, with 17,000 still reported missing.

Across the battered northeast coast, hundreds of thousands of people whose homes were destroyed still have no power, no hot meals and, in many cases, no showers for two weeks.

More than a quarter of a million people are in shelters. Exhausted rescuers are still sifting through the wreckage of towns and villages, retrieving bodies.

Despite such a shocking toll, much attention since the disaster has been on the possibility of a catastrophic meltdown at Fukushima.

Radioactive water has been found in buildings of three of the six reactors at the power complex 240km north of Tokyo. On Thursday, three workers sustained burns at reactor No. 3 after being exposed to radiation levels 10,000 times higher than usually found in a reactor.
"Bailing out accumulated water from the turbine housing units before radiation levels rise further is becoming very important," Hidehiko Nishiyama, a senior official from Japan''s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said.

"We are working out ways of safely bailing out the water so that it does not get out into the environment, and we are making preparations," Nishiyama said.

He initially said the high radiation reading meant there could be damage to the reactor, but he later said it could be from venting operations to release pressure or water leakage from pipes or valves.

"There is no data suggesting a crack," he said.

Nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Friday there had not been much change in the crisis over the previous 24 hours.

"Some positive trends are continuing but there remain areas of uncertainty that are of serious concern," Graham Andrew, an agency official, said in Vienna, adding the high radiation could be coming from steam.