14 DAY TRIAL // Spokespersons for Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) have announced that the Fukushima nuclear plant is indeed leaking contaminated water into the sea.
Their announcement comes shortly after Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) went public with the news that, according to their investigations, radioactive water had worked its way into the plant's surroundings.
The NRA also said that some of this contaminated water might have leaked into the Pacific Ocean. At that time, Tepco denied these accusations.
Meanwhile, the company has had a change of heart, and has decided to be more open about what is actually going on at this nuclear facility.
The Inquisitr reports that, although Tepco has owned up to the fact that the plant is leaking radioactive water, its spokespersons insist that, for the time being, the leakage has only affected a very small area close to the facility.
The company claims that the radioactive materials have not spread beyond the perimeter of the plant, and that retention walls built in the aftermath of the nuclear disaster in 2011 are doing their job to keep the leakage confined.
Therefore, people don't have all that much to worry about, Tepco believes.
What is interesting is that Tepco appears to be clueless about when the plant started to leak, and how much contaminated water has thus far been released into the environment, Bloomberg explains.
Or at least this is what the company's official statements say.
The same source informs us that many suspect that the facility has been leaking since March 2011, when it was badly damaged by a devastating earthquake and its subsequent tsunami.
These people also believe that Tepco is fully aware of this, yet has chosen to keep its silence.
Masayuki Ono, Tepco's current general manager, wished to apologize to the people of Japan for any troubles that the plant had caused them. Additionally, he apologized for the fact that the company had taken that long to admit that the plant was leaking.
“We would like to offer our deep apology for causing grave worries for many people, especially for people in Fukushima,” Masayuki Ono said in a statement.