Tokyo (cnn) - iodine radioactive in seawater around the nuclear Central Fukushima Daiichi fell sharply even before that workers connected to a water leak would be its crippled no. 2 reactor, owner of the factory said Wednesday night.
Stop the highly radioactive water flows into the Pacific Ocean has been a win key for workers who have struggled to keep reactors for the plant damaged by the earthquake of overheating for almost four weeks. But the Tokyo Electric Power Co., and a senior Japanese official warned that the fight is far from over.
Concentrations of iodine 131 had been as high as 7.5 million times standards in water directly behind the factory after the leak was discovered Saturday. They had dropped below 4% of this amount in the 24 hours before the leak had been cut off on Wednesday morning, according to figures released by Tokyo Electric.
The level remained 280 000 times higher than the legal limit, but these concentrations were significantly dropping as the water flowed in the Pacific. Levels of caesium-137 mingle were significantly but remains 61 000 times the legal standard, according to the Tokyo Electric water sampling data.
Samples of checkpoint 20 kilometres (12.5 km) southeast of the plant levels of iodine 131 low levels at 1.5 legal times, with no reading of cesium.
Said Japanese authorities believe that the water leaking was part of 8 metric tons (2,100 gallons) per hour pumping in the No. 2, one of the three reactor that suffered damage to the heart after the severe earthquake that struck the North of the Japan on March 11. The water has been leaks in the basement of the plant of turbine unit, carrying with it the radioactive particles which are the by-product of nuclear reactors.
Until Wednesday, the fluid is cast in the sea of a shaft concrete cracked near the turbine plant water intake. Workers managed to use a polymer nicknamed silica based "liquid glass" seal of the breach on Wednesday morning, but top spokesman for the Japanese Government on the crisis said responsible Government and utilities other problems.
We cannot be optimistic because we have been able to connect it-Secretary General of the Government of Japan Yukio Edano
"Is it completely stopped?" Y all the other areas where the (radioactive) water is published? "the Secretary General of Government Yukio Edano, the spokesman said. "We cannot be optimistic, because we have been able to plug it."
Hidehiko Nishiyama and nuclear safety agency said Japanese industrial water now "can lead to leaks more somewhere else."
Tokyo Electric started non-flammable pumping of nitrogen into the primary containment reactor No. 1 end vessel Wednesday in what it says, it was a precautionary measure to counter a possible accumulation of hydrogen.
"The possibility of an explosion of hydrogen is extremely low", the company announced Wednesday night. "But more hydrogen may eventually develop in the containment vessel."
The accumulation of hydrogen is a symptom of overheating of the fuel rods and can cause explosions as spectacular explosions which blew the roofs off buildings in reactor No. 1 and no. 3 days after the earthquake on March 11. But the Tokyo Electric said that he did not believe that an explosion was imminent.
The radioactive nuclei of units 1-3 were damaged when the tsunami that followed the earthquake flooded plant, knocking on the power of its cooling systems and deactivation of the emergency generator to restore electricity. Engineers have responded by pumping water in the outside reactors to stave off a feared collapse, but they are now struggling with what to do with thousands of tons of contaminated fluids now.
Since Monday evening, the plant less radioactive discharge around 10,000 tonnes of water in the ocean, in large part to the place in a tank of waste for supercharged coolant leaking reactor No. 2.
"Currently, they are not systems implemented at their disposal for the treatment of liquid waste of FDR, and they are generating waste liquids rad at a rate of approximately 400 000 litres per day," said Michael Friedlander, a plant operator former nuclear power. "Therefore, without a doubt, if they are put in place systems to manage that, they will have to continue dumping water in the ocean.".
Tokyo Electric had released about three-quarters of the water - also from the subdrains below reactors 5 and 6 - by Wednesday evening and had reduced its estimate of what has been the subject of dumping of the treatment facility. But the discharge, the Japanese officials called an emergency measure attracted protests from neighbours of South Korea and angry fishermen in the country.
Edano said Wednesday that the move was "inevitable" and that it would reduce the harm to the environment. But he told journalists, "we must have reported (more information) for people who may be concerned, in particular for neighbouring countries".
"It was a measure to prevent more serious marine contamination, but we need to explain the reasoning better,"he says."
Members of the association of the Japan fishing have expressed their anger in a Wednesday morning meetings with representatives of Tokyo Electric, complaining that they had argued against the first and that he did not say that later that the process will begin. Edano, said the Japanese Government plans "allowance" to give a more immediate impetus to fishermen, advance a more final payment plan which can be established in the future.
Experts have said that probable releases pose risks to health in the long term for human or marine life. It also helps that most of the radiatioactive detected particles are iodine-131, which lost half of its radiation every eight days.
Discharge of emergency amounting to approximately five swimming pools, compared to "about 300 trillion pools" that meet the Pacific Ocean, said Timothy Jorgensen, President of the Security Commission of radiation at Georgetown University Medical Center.
"Hope that the ocean turbulence and currents is quickly dispersed it so that it gets very dilute concentrations relatively quickly."
After a tumultuous weeks, utility and Government officials have described conditions recently in the reactors and spent nuclear fuel as generally stable pools. Levels of radiation airborne in the vicinity and later, at the same time, have been constant decline.
Yet, the existence of large quantities of radioactive water collected around the installation suggests that there may be other leaks - and other problems. Hiroo Saso, Susan Olson and Tsukushi Ikeda contributed to this report by CNN.
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