Officials retract reports of extremely high radiation at Fukushima plant

Comment: Yet more evidence suggesting that the Japanese government is covering up the extent of a crisis they cannot effectively manage.

Julie Makinen and Kenji Hall
LA Times
March 27, 2011

Earlier reports said that contamination had reached 10 million times higher than normal. The reversal highlights the sometimes overwhelming cascade of information the Japanese are now receiving about the nuclear crisis.

Officials at Japan’s stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant late Sunday retracted their announcement that they had found puddles at the facility’s No. 2 reactor containing 10 million times more radioactivity than would be found in water in a normally functioning nuclear reactor.

“The number is not credible,” Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Takashi Kurita, said, according to the Associated Press. “We are very sorry.”

It was not immediately clear what led to the inaccurate reading of the water, or what the real level was.

The initial announcement of the extremely high levels of radioactivity in the turbine building of the No. 2 reactor was made by Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, citing Tepco as the source of the data. The alarming-sounding disclosure raised questions about the source of the radioactivity and the extent of damage to the plant, as well as the threat to workers trying to stabilize the situation at Fukushima, which was crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that rocked Japan.

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