TEPCO pumped highly radioactive water to the "wrong place".

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) announced on April 14 that approximately 203 tons of highly radioactive water had been mistakenly pumped into another building at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The scene of a radioactive water leak on February 20. Source: Kyodo/VNA

This water may not have leaked out of the building because the radiation levels measured in groundwater samples near the area have not changed, but TEPCO is investigating why the pumps activated and diverted water to another building.

According to TEPCO, this contaminated water has a concentration of 37 million becquerels/liter of radioactive cesium.

Since April 10th, the water level inside the building intended to receive this water has begun to decrease, and TEPCO conducted an inspection on April 12th.

On the afternoon of April 13, the power company discovered four pumps were running and shut them off. Workers then also discovered radioactive water rising in another building.

These four pumps were installed in June 2011 following the nuclear crisis caused by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

These pumps are specifically designed to transfer water during emergencies, but they had never been used before.

At the Fukushima plant, water used to cool the three damaged reactors typically flows through several buildings and then undergoes a reverse osmosis filtration process to reduce its radiation levels.

A portion of this water will be reused to continue the cooling cycle for the fuel rods, while the rest will be stored in tanks.

According to Vietnam+