With no confirmation on where highly radioactive water is pouring out of Japan's stricken Dai-ichi nuclear plant, workers have turned to a milky white dye to try to trace the contaminated water's path into the ocean.
Workers have already located a crack in a maintenance pit for the Unit 2 reactor that sits near the shoreline, where contaminated water is believed to be entering the ocean. But it remains unclear how the water is getting out of the plant and into the pit.
On Monday, the workers poured several kilograms of salt into a pathway leading to the pit, but Japan's NHK broadcaster reports that the milky salt-water did not flow there, indicating that the precise ocean contamination pathway is still unclear.
Radioactive water has been building up at the six-reactor Dai-ichi plant since the massive March 11 quake and accompanying tsunami disabled cooling systems at the facility. That has left officials and plant workers turning to desperate, makeshift and unconventional means of keeping the reactors cooled down and under control.
Helicopters, fire trucks and water pumps have been used in recent weeks to force water into the damaged reactors to prevent nuclear fuel rods from overheating, as well as possible meltdowns.
"We must keep putting water into the reactors to cool to prevent further fuel damage, even though we know that there is a side effect, which is the leakage," Nuclear Safety and Industrial Agency spokesperson Hidehiko Nishiyama said Monday.
"We want to get rid of the stagnant water and decontaminate the place so that we can return to our primary task to restore the sustainable cooling capacity as quickly as possible."
As a result of this unwanted build-up, plant officials have made plans to dump 10,000 tons of water with radiation above the legal limit into the ocean – a move the Japanese government has said is "an unavoidable emergency measure."
Junichi Matsumoto, a spokesperson for the Tokyo Electric Power Company, said the release will help clear space within a waste storage building where more highly contaminated water can be stored.
With files from The Associated Press
