Engineers in Japan hope mix plugs leak
TOKYO -- Engineers pinned their hopes on chemicals, sawdust and shredded newspaper to stop radioactive water pouring into the ocean from Japan's tsunami-ravaged nuclear plant Sunday as officials said it will take several months to bring the crisis under control, the first time they have provided a timetable.
Concrete already failed to stop the tainted water spewing from a crack in a maintenance pit, and the new mixture did not appear to be working either, but engineers said they were not abandoning it.
The Fukushima Dai-ichi plant has been leaking radioactivity since an earthquake and tsunami carved a path of destruction along Japan's northeastern coast on March 11, killing as many as 25,000 people and knocking out cooling systems that kept the plant from overheating. People living within 12 miles of the plant have been forced to abandon their homes.
The government said Sunday that it will be several months before the radiation stops and permanent cooling systems are restored. Even after that, there will be years of work to clean up the area around the complex and figure out what to do with it.
"It would take a few months until we finally get things under control and have a better idea about the future," Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama said. "We'll face a crucial turning point within the next few months, but that is not the end."
His agency said the timetable is based on the first step, pumping radioactive water into tanks, being completed quickly and the second, restoring cooling systems, being done within a matter of weeks or months.
Every day brings some new problem at the plant, where workers have often been forced to retreat from repair efforts because of high radiation levels. On Sunday, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. announced it had found the bodies of two workers missing since the tsunami.
Radiation, debris and explosions kept workers from finding them until Wednesday, and then the announcement was delayed several days out of respect for their families.
TEPCO officials said they think the workers ran down to a basement to check equipment after the magnitude-9.0 earthquake that preceded the tsunami. They were there when the wave swept over the plant.
"It pains us to have lost these two young workers who were trying to protect the power plant amid the earthquake and tsunami," TEPCO Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata said in a statement.
On Saturday, workers discovered an 8-inch crack in a maintenance pit at the plant and said they think water from it might be the source of some of the high levels of radioactive iodine that have been found in the ocean for more than a week.
The discovery is the first time they have found radioactive water leaking directly into the sea. A picture released by TEPCO showed water shooting some distance away from a wall and splashing into the ocean. No other cracks have been found.
The radioactive water dissipates quickly in the ocean but could be dangerous to workers at the plant.
Engineers tried to seal the crack with concrete Saturday, but that effort failed.
On Sunday, they went farther up the system and injected sawdust, three garbage bags of shredded newspaper and a polymer -- similar to one used to absorb liquid in diapers -- that can expand to 50 times its normal size when combined with water.
The polymer mix in the passageway leading to the pit had not stopped the leak by Sunday night, but it had not leaked out of the crack with the water, and engineers were stirring it in an attempt to get it to expand.
They expected to know by this morning if the effort would work.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people are still living in shelters, 200,000 households do not have water, and 170,000 do not have electricity.
Running water was just restored in the port city of Kesennuma on Saturday, and residents lined up Sunday to see a dentist who had flown in from the country's far north to offer his services. Many were elderly and complaining of problems with their dentures.
Overhead and throughout the coastal region, helicopters and planes roared by as U.S. and Japanese forces finished their all-out search for bodies.
The effort, which ended Sunday, is probably the final hope for retrieving the dead, though limited operations might continue. It has turned up nearly 50 bodies in the past two days.
In all, more than 12,000 deaths have been confirmed, and another 15,500 people are missing.
Radioactive material detected in Henderson
RENO -- Tiny amounts of radioactive material from Japan's damaged nuclear plant are showing up in Henderson, but scientists say the readings are far below levels that could pose health risks.
Radiation levels detected at a monitoring station at the College of Southern Nevada in Henderson were similar to those reported earlier at a station at the Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas, said Ted Hartwell, manager of the Desert Research Institute's Community Environmental Monitoring Program.
Minuscule amounts of the radioactive isotopes iodine-131, xenon-133, cesium-137 and tellurium-132 reached both stations last week, he said.
Hartwell said he is certain the isotopes came from Japan because they have not been detected around the Nevada National Security Site, formerly the Nevada Test Site, since atomic testing ended there in 1992.
"I would say these are still at extremely low levels at the edge of detection and represent no public threat," he said.
He said he was unsure how the latest levels compared with readings from the 1950s when testing of atomic bombs was at its height in Nevada.
He referred questions about comparison readings to National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Darwin Morgan, who did not return phone calls.
Results from testing at four or five other monitoring stations around the Nevada National Security Site will be released over the next two weeks. DRI operates 29 stations that monitor for radioactivity around the site.
State health officials have said they do not expect any risk from Japan radiation releases because of the distance the materials must travel.
Traces of radiation from Japan are being detected from coast to coast in the United States and in Iceland.
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