Just when one though the bad news out of Fukushima would trickle down, no pun intended, if only because purely statistically it was improbable that any more bad news would leak out, here comes TEPCO which at a press conference this morning announced that "roughly 300 tonnes of radioactive water has seeped from a storage tank, marking the worst leak in more than 2½ years of efforts to contain the effects of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami."

 

In other words, not only is the irradiated coolant water overflowing the storage tanks, it is also leaking straight into the environment, including the surrounding soil, ocean and who knows where else.

 

FT reports that at a press conference on Tuesday, Tokyo Electric Power said it had detected a leak in one of the tanks that store water used to cool melted uranium fuel rods. A puddle that formed near the tank was emitting a radiation dose of 100 millisieverts an hour when measured a short distance above the surface, Tepco said – about 350,000 times higher than natural background levels.