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Water containing high levels of radiation has been found outside of reactor buildings at Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant. Water tested in tunnels running underneath the nuclear facility had radiation levels similar to the water found inside turbine rooms in the reactor buildings. The levels are high enough to cause temporary radiation sickness.The buildings appear to be unable to contain contaminated water, which increases the likelihood that radiation has seeped into ground soil or into the sea. Fukushima lies just 200 feet from shore. A spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Agency said radioactive water had probably made it into the Pacific Ocean, but said it would not yet pose a health risk to seal life or humans. The continuing spread of irradiated water also inhibits workers trying to restore power to Fukushima’s water pumps. Last week Prime minister Naoto Kan called the situation at Fukushima “grave and serious” at the same time the government was urging 130,000 residents to leave the area not for health reasons but to improve their “quality of life”.

GUEST: John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, and author of North Korea/South Korea: U.S. Policy & the Korean Peninsula