NHK...

Tokyo Electric Power Company on Wednesday announced new estimates of damage after the country's nuclear safety agency questioned the accuracy of the initial assessments. The utility has revised the estimated fuel damage in the No.1 reactor from 70 percent to 55 percent, saying radiation levels were not correct.

TEPCO also says that it acted inappropriately in excluding fuel damage of less than 5 percent in calculating total damage ratios for the No.2 and No.3 reactors.

As a result, the utility revised upward its estimates of damaged fuel in the No.2 and No.3 reactors by 5 percentage points each to 35 percent and 30 percent respectively.
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Tokyo Electric announced on Wednesday it would start building early next month, together with US and French firms, a storage and processing facility for nearly 70,000 tons of highly radioactive water. The utility firm aims to begin operating the system in June of this year.

The contaminated water is believed to be pooled inside turbine buildings and utility tunnels at the plant's 1, 2 and 3 reactors.

Tokyo Electric had earlier said it aims to set up by July of this year a system to remove radioactive substances from the water and reuse it to cool the reactors.

Contaminated water will be put through an oil filter, and the density of radioactive material would be lowered using a mineral called zeolite.

Salt would then be removed from the water so that it could be used to cool the reactors again.

Radioactive waste from this process would be stored inside the nuclear complex, but the utility has yet to consider methods for its final disposal.
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The operator of the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says water may be leaking from the spent fuel pool of the No. 4 reactor.

More than 1,500 spent fuel rods are stored in the pool, the largest number at the site.

Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, has been injecting water daily into the pool to make up for the loss of cooling function and prevent the fuel rods from being exposed and further damaged.

TEPCO has poured in 140 to 210 tons of water over each of the last few days. The company found that water levels in the pool were 10 to 40 centimeters lower than expected despite the water injections.

The walls of the reactor building supporting the pool were severely damaged by a hydrogen explosion last month. TEPCO says the pool may have been damaged by the blast as well.

According to a schedule announced earlier on containing the ongoing emergency, TEPCO plans to install concrete pillars to support the fuel pool by around July to increase its earthquake resistance.