The discovery last week that about 300 tons of highly radioactive water leaked from a tank at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has reminded both people in Japan and around the world that the nation's nuclear crisis is far from over and that radioactive substances are continuing to be released into the environment.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority proposed raising the severity level of the leak from the earlier level 1 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) of 8 to level 3. The nuclear catastrophe at the plant, as a whole, is rated as level 7.
The massive water leak is only the latest in a serious of accidents that have plagued the plant since the disaster started on March 11, 2011. It highlights the inability of Tepco to manage the crisis — which in large part was caused by Tepco's inept management of the nuclear plant.