TOKYO – Emergency workers struggling to pump contaminated water from Japans stricken nuclear complex fled from one of the troubled reactors today after reporting a huge increase in radioactivity — a spike that officials later apologetically said was inaccurate. The apology came after employees fled the complexs Unit 2 reactor when a reading showed radiation levels had reached 10 million times higher than normal in the reactors cooling system. Officials said they were so high that the worker taking the measurements had withdrawn before taking a second reading.
On Sunday night, though, plant operators said that while the water was contaminated with radiation, the extremely high reading was a mistake. "The number is not credible," said Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Takashi Kurita. "We are very sorry."
He said officials were taking another sample to get accurate levels, but did not know when the results would be announced. The situation came as officials acknowledged there was radioactive water in all four of the Fukushima Dai-ichi complexs most troubled reactors, and as airborne radiation in Unit 2 measured 1,000 millisieverts per hour — four times the limit deemed safe by the government, Kurita said.
Officials say they still dont know where the radioactive water is coming from, though government spokesman Yukio Edano has said some is "almost certainly" seeping from a cracked reactor core in one of the units. While the discovery of the high radiation levels — and the evacuation of workers from one reactor unit — again delayed efforts to bring the deeply troubled complex under control, Edano insisted the situation had partially stabilized.