Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant may spill more contaminated water into the ocean within a week if engineers fail to fix a glitch in a new clean-up system.
"We are working on this with plans (to start the system) today," Reuters quoted an official with Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the operator of Fukushima plant, as saying on Friday.
TEPCO says radioactive water has leaked from a facility used to absorb cesium due to a system malfunction.
The official added that there will not be enough space at the nuclear plant to store more radioactive water by June 20 if they cannot fix the fault in the system.
Following the twin disasters of earthquake and tsunami in March, TEPCO pumped large amounts of water into three reactors where the cooling systems had stopped working.
The halt in the cooling systems operation sparked meltdowns, explosions and radiation leaks.
TEPCO is planning to use a new system, which employs French and US technology, to decontaminate the nearly 110,000 tons of highly radioactive water that is stored at the plant. The decontaminated water can be re-used to cool the reactors.
In early April, the utility dumped around 10,000 tons of water with low-level contamination into the ocean, drawing criticism from China and South Korea.
