Radioactive Fukushima Groundwater Poses New Threats, Tepco's 'Sense of Crisis is Weak'

Radioactive groundwater from around the crippled Fukushima nuclear campus has breached an underground barrier and could begin rapidly seeping into the Pacific Ocean, creating an "emergency" situation that the nuclear power plant's operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) is struggling to keep under control.

Last month Tepco said that the underground barrier containing the groundwater had been breached and the contaminated water was leaking into the ocean, but that it was taking steps to fix the problem, the BBC reported.

The beleaguered nuclear campus has been hampered by a seemingly never-ending string of problems including fires, power failures and the puzzle of where to store the huge volumes of contaminated water collected from the reactor cores.

Shinji Kinjo, head of a Nuclear Regulatory Authority task force, criticized Tepco, saying that groundwater contamination countermeasures in place by the nuclear operator are not permanent solutions and that the group's sense of urgency in the crisis is not where it needs to be.

In an exclusive interview, he told Reuters that the groundwater is highly contaminated and exceeds the legal limits of radioactive discharge and that it will likely seep up from the ground and create an even larger environmental threat.

"Right now we have a state of emergency," Kinjo said, adding there is a "rather high possibility" that the radioactive wastewater has breached the barrier and is rising toward the ground's surface.

Tepco's "sense of crisis is weak," Kinjo said. "This is why you can't just leave it up to Tepco alone" to contend with the ongoing disaster.

When the Fukushima nuclear campus was dealt a deathblow by a massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, the Japanese government did allow Tepco to release tens of thousands of tons of contaminated water into the ocean in an emergency maneuver. Though the move was the best of several bad options, it was highly criticized by locals and the governments of countries around the world.

It is not immediately clear how much of a threat the contaminated groundwater could pose.

"Until we know the exact density and volume of the water that's flowing out, I honestly can't speculate on the impact on the sea," Mitsuo Uematsu from the Center for International Collaboration, Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute at the University of Tokyo told Reuters.

"We also should check what the levels are like in the sea water. If it's only inside the port and it's not flowing out into the sea, it may not spread as widely as some fear."