Radioactive tellurium-129m was detected for the first time in seawater near the water intake of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant's No. 1 reactor, Tokyo Electric Power Co., the plant operator, said June 29.
Radioactive tellurium-129m was detected for the first time in seawater near the water intake of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant's No. 1 reactor, Tokyo Electric Power Co., the plant operator, said June 29.
Seven hundred and twenty becquerels of the substance was detected per liter of water collected on June 4. This concentration is about 2.4 times safe levels.
Tellurium-129m has a short half-life of about 34 days. Its detection near the intake indicates the possibility of a new leak of radioactive water into the sea.
TEPCO, however, said a new leak was unlikely because there wasn't a sharp increase in other radioactive substances and because tellurium-129m was detected only at this single sampling point near the water intake.
Also on June 29, TEPCO announced that as of the day before about 121,000 tons of highly radioactive water was present at the No. 1 through No. 4 reactors at the plant, up 16,000 tons from the end of May.
TEPCO said that moving forward, the new water purification system will cleanse 3,000 tons of radioactive water a week.
The calculation is based on the system operating at 80 percent capacity. Actual utilization was only about 55 percent from June 17 to June 28.