Thread: Fukushima leak questions handling of nuclear plant crisis ABC Australia Prime Time Report YOSHIMURA, WATER STORAGE SPECIALIST (voiceover translation): There are 340,000 tonnes of contaminated water inside the tanks. TEPCO rushed to build the tanks out of steel, but with the salt and all the radiation, they corrode quite quickly. The rubber seals are also vulnerable to radiation and they decay fast.

MARK WILLACY: At the time of the leak, only two inspectors were checking 900 tanks at any one time, so this highly radioactive leak went unnoticed for a month.

In this video, an inspector from Japan's nuclear watchdog asks a TEPCO official if the company has been keeping records of tank inspections and radiation readings. "No," replies the TEPCO official.

KAZUNARI YOSHIMURA (voiceover translation): It's a matter of course that you install water gauges on tanks like this, so it's a mystery why TEPCO didn't install gauges so that they could easily tell how much water was inside and if there had been a leak. It's absurd.

MARK WILLACY: Atsunao Marui is one of Japan's top groundwater scientists and a member of a panel set up by TEPCO and the Government to try to find ways of managing Fukushima's growing reservoir of radioactive water. He says putting the nuclear plant on this stretch of coast in the first place was inviting disaster.