The Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, the operator of the Fukushima power plant, announced another spill at the wrecked nuclear reactor site. This time approximately 115 gallons of toxic waste water spilled and in all likelihood ended up in the Pacific Ocean according to the power company on Thursday.

According to TEPCO, “At around 8:05 PM on October 2, 2013, a TEPCO employee found a water dropping from around the top plate of B area (south) tank (No.5 tank at Group A in B area), while he was working in that area for the purpose of treating the accumulated water inside the dike at B area (south), where treated water from the desalination apparatus is stored in the tanks, at Fukushima Daiichi NPS.”

The company went on to say, “At 9:55 PM on the same day (on October 2), after examining the situation at the site, we found that the leaked water was not only dropping inside the dike, but also dropping to outside of the dike via the scaffold installed around the tank for inspection.”

The leaked water was analyzed and the measurements were found to be:

All-β: 200,000Bq/L (by a simplified measurement method)
– Cesium-134: 18Bq/L
– Cesium-137: 54Bq/L

TEPCO used sandbags in the side ditch and stopped the water from continuing to drain into the ocean according to the company.

The power company has been beleaguered by spills, with the most recent being the 300 tons of radioactive water that leaked from one of the hastily constructed containment tanks during the month of August. TEPCO also acknowledged that toxic groundwater is also seeping into the ocean everyday.

The August leak prompted the Japanese government to step in and increase its involvement in the decommissioning of the plant which will no doubt take decades to complete.