Awwal 01, 1432, April 05, 2011, SPA -- Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) began releasing low-level radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean to make room for even more contaminated water now leaking into the sea, news reports said Tuesday. A total of 11,500 tons of wastewater containing radioactivity about 100 times the legal limit were to be released, Kyodo News said. TEPCO was dumping the water to clear out a storage chamber needed for even more dangerous water leaking from a tunnel and the basement of a turbine building adjacent to reactor number 2 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in north-east Japan. The six-reactor plant was crippled by the March 11 magnitude-9 earthquake and mammoth tsunami. The highly contaminated water, used to cool overheating reactors and spent-fuel pools, has hindered efforts to restore key functions at the plant, according to a report of the German Press Agency "DPA".
