Japan’s industry minister chides utility president over radioactive water leak at Fukushima plant

TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s industry minister summoned the president of the utility that runs the Fukushima nuclear power plant to his office Wednesday and chided him for a radioactive water leak at the plant earlier this month.

Mishaps related to the massive amount of contaminated water at the tsunami-damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant are especially sensitive while the government tries to get support for discharging treated wastewater into the sea — a process that will take decades and has worried people inside and outside Japan.

Industry Minister Ken Saito called for heightened safety awareness and preventive measures and urged company President Tomoaki Kobayakawa to take it seriously as a management issue.

The move followed a series of mishaps led by human errors at the plant, where three nuclear reactors melted down after the massive 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Most recently, 1.5 metric ton of highly radioactive water escaped in early February during valve checks at a SARRY treatment machine designed to remove cesium and strontium from the contaminated water, according to the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, or TEPCO. The leakage has been downgraded from an initial estimate of 5.5 tons.

No one was injured and the spill did not escape the plant compound.

Saito called on TEPCO to fully examine the mishaps to find whether they may have common causes, while consider using digital technology as a way of preventing human errors.

“The mishaps would trigger unease in the local community as well as many others in and outside Japan about the safety of the ongoing decommissioning carried out by TEPCO,” the minister said.

In the February incident, workers left several air valves open while they flushed the machine