英闻天下——486 120 Tons of Highly Radioactive Water Leaks out of Fukushima Plant

 Tokyo Electric Power Company says up to 120 tons of highly radioactive water may have leaked out of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Masayuki Ono is a spokesman for the company, which operates the nuclear plant.

"We followed correct procedure when we constructed the tanks, but from our current measurements it appears that there may have been a leak."

Ono said tests earlier this month at one of the seven underground reservoirs at the plant detected about 6,000 becquerels per cubic centimetre in water around the tank.

Contaminated water in the reservoir has now been pumped into other tanks nearby. The process is expected to last about five days.

Ono added that the tank is 800 metres from the ocean and there is no sign the contaminated water has leaked into the sea.

"At the current time our measurements inside and outside the bay by the plant do not indicate high radiation levels, so going on that basis we do not believe there is a leak into the sea."

The underground tanks store water after it has been used to cool the plant's nuclear reactors¹. Cesium is removed from the water before storage but other radioactive elements like strontium remain.

So far company officials could not confirm which elements are thought to have leaked, but said it is 'highly likely' levels exceeded government limits.

The leak is the latest in a series of mishaps² in recent weeks that have marred³ the cleanup at the Fukushima Daiichi facility crippled by 2011's massive earthquake and tsunami⁴.

1 reactors   

起反应的人( reactor的名词复数 )； 反应装置； 原子炉； 核反应堆

参考例句：

• The TMI nuclear facility has two reactors. 三哩岛核设施有两个反应堆。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法
• The earliest production reactors necessarily used normal uranium as fuel. 最早为生产用的反应堆，必须使用普通铀作为燃料。

2 mishaps   

n.轻微的事故，小的意外( mishap的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• a series of mishaps 一连串的倒霉事
• In spite of one or two minor mishaps everything was going swimmingly. 尽管遇到了一两件小小的不幸，一切都进行得很顺利。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

3 marred   

adj. 被损毁, 污损的

参考例句：

• The game was marred by the behaviour of drunken fans. 喝醉了的球迷行为不轨，把比赛给搅了。
• Bad diction marred the effectiveness of his speech. 措词不当影响了他演说的效果。

4 tsunami   

n.海啸

参考例句：

• Powerful quake sparks tsunami warning in Japan.大地震触发了日本的海啸预警。
• Coastlines all around the Indian Ocean inundated by a huge tsunami.大海啸把印度洋沿岸地区都淹没了。