Japan nuke watchdog may raise leak to 'serious'

The Japanese nuclear watchdog on Wednesday said they are taking the leakage of highly radioactive water at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant seriously, and proposed raising the rating to describe it from "an anomaly" to a "serious incident." The operator of the plant said about 300 tons (300,000 liters, 80,000 gallons) of contaminated water has leaked from one of hundreds of steel tanks around the wrecked Fukushima Dai-ichi plant. Tokyo Electric Power Co. hasn't figured out how or where the water leaked, but suspects it did so through a seam on the tank. The leak, the fifth since last year involving tanks of the same design, also raised concerns that this could be the beginning a new disaster - contaminated water leaking from storage tanks one after another, AP reported.