Japan Nuke Plant Leak Worse Than Thought

Tokyo Electric Power Co. President Tsunehisa Katsumata, right bottom, bows to Kashiwazaki city mayor Hiroshi Aida, left, a sign of apology in Kashiwazaki, northeastern Japan, Wednesday, July 18, 2007. The top power official apologized for radioactive leaks and several other malfunctions that occurred at a Japanese nuclear plant after a deadly earthquake, but said the company's basic safety measures still worked. (AP Photo/Junji Kurokawa) (Junji Kurokawa - AP)

Even that list had to be revised. Tokyo Electric said later Wednesday that about 400 barrels containing low-level nuclear waste had tipped over at a storage facility at the plant during the quake, revising an earlier figure of 100.

The lids were knocked off about 40 barrels, spilling their contents onto the floor, spokesman Tsutomu Uehara told reporters in Tokyo. Uehara said no radiation had been detected outside the facility.

Concerns about nuclear safety echoed across Japan, which depends on 55 reactors for about 30 percent of its electricity needs.

"Japan has a dense population so the human damage would be major here. There would be many deaths," Hideyuki Ban, a director of the civil group Citizen's Nuclear Information Center, told reporters. "I think that a quake-prone country should phase out its use of nuclear power."

The International Atomic Energy Agency pressed Japan's government to undertake a thorough investigation of the damage to see if lessons could be applied to nuclear plants elsewhere.

Speaking in Malaysia, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei offered help from his U.N. watchdog agency.

"I would hope, and I trust, that Japan would be fully transparent in its investigation of that accident," he said. "The agency would be ready to join Japan through an international team in reviewing that accident and drawing the necessary lessons."

Katsumata, Tokyo Electric's president, said the company would thoroughly study the impact of the earthquake.

"We will conduct an investigation from the ground up. But I think fundamentally we have confirmed that our safety measures worked," he said. "It is hard to make everything go perfectly."

Yet, while Japan is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries, executives at the plant admitted they had not foreseen such a powerful temblor hitting the facility.

The plant's deputy superintendent, Masakazu Minamidate, said the strongest known quake in the region previously was a magnitude 6.5. "This was stronger than we expected," he said.

New data from aftershocks following Monday's offshore quake suggested a fault line may run underneath the power plant itself, which was only 12 miles from the epicenter.