Tokyo Electric Power Company is working to transfer radioactive water from a leaking storage tank at its damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
Radioactive water stored in a large underground tank was found to be leaking between Wednesday and Friday.
The utility estimates that 120 tons have leaked so far.
This is the same amount that leaked from storage tank plumbing in March of last year. The leakage is likely to continue, making it the largest leak since the government announced that the reactors had been brought to a state of cold shutdown in December of 2011.
Workers using 4 pumps started to transfer the water to an adjacent tank on Saturday morning.
To shorten the time for the operation, they later began to transfer the water to another tank south of the one that is leaking. Five pumps are being used to transfer 200 tons per hour. TEPCO says it will take more than 3 days to complete the work.
TEPCO estimates that 710 billion becquerels of radioactive strontium, or about 3 times more than the annual allowable limit at the complex, has leaked.
The utility says the contaminated water has not flowed into the ocean, but the leakage is expected to continue until the transfer is completed.
TEPCO is planning to monitor the state of leakage and its impact on the environment by measuring levels of radioactive materials in the soil around the tan
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