Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano on Monday railed against owner and operator of the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant Tokyo Electric Power Co.(TEPCO) for providing hugely inaccurate data to the government on the concentration of radioactive substances in one of the reactor's fuel pools.


HTML clipboard A handout from Japan Ground Self-Defense Force via Kyodo shows No. 4 reactor at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Tomioka, Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan March 27, 2011. The operator of Japan's stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant said on Monday a very high radiation reading that had sent workers fleeing the No. 2 reactor was erroneous. Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) vice-president Sakae Muto apologised for Sunday's error, which added to alarm inside and outside Japan over the impact of contamination from the complex which was hit by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11.(Xinhua/Reuters Photo)
Edano, Japan's top government spokesperson, admonished the beleaguered utility after they retracted a statement made earlier Monday that the concentration of radioactive substances detected in the pool at the No. 2 reactor was 10 million times higher than usual.


"The erroneous reading given by Tokyo Electric Power Co. is completely unacceptable," Edano said at a news conference.

TEPCO later corrected itself saying the reading was actually 100,000 times higher than usual, reading more than 1,000 millisieverts per hour at the surface of the flooded No. 2 reactor 's turbine building.


The government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency also slammed the utility saying that such errors are further eroding the government's and the public's trust in TEPCO's assessments.


With reference to the surge in radiation detected in the No. 2 reactor's fuel pool for the third straight day, Edano said that water flooding the basement of the reactor's building had become irradiated due to melted fuel rods.


"The radiation seems to have come from fuel rods that temporarily melted down and came in contact with the water used to cool the reactor. Steam may have condensed carrying water from within the containment vessel," he said.


VietNamNet/Xinhuanet