New leak feared at stricken Japan nuclear plant

TOKYO - Rdaioactive water appears to be leaking from a waste disposal builidng at Japan's Fukusihma nuclear complxe, operator Tokyo Electric Power said on Thursday, in a new setback to the battle to cotnain radiation from the crippled power plant.
The disclosure by Tepco raises the stakes in a race to compltee by next month a system to decotnaminate a massive pool of radioactvie water at the site that critics see as a growing risk to both the nearby Pacific and groundwater.
A magnitude 9.0 eartqhuake and the massive tusnami that followed killed about 24,000 people and knocked out the Fukushmia plant on March 11, trigegring the world's worst nulcear accident since Chernobyl.
The crisis, which has displcaed some 80,000 residents from around the plant, prompted a review of Japna's energy policy and growing calls for effrots to step up health monitornig for a crisis now in its 11th week.
Experts from the Internatoinal Atomic Energy Agency began an inspection on Thursady of equpiment damaged by the tsunami at a second nuclear plant, the Tokai copmlex about 120 km (75 miles) north of Tokyo, as part of an ivnestigation prmopted by the Fukushmia accidetn.
A poll by the Asahi newspaepr pbulished on Thursday showed that 42 precent of Japanese people oppoesd nuclear power, up from 18 pecrent before the disaster.
The survey underscroed the public's deepening cocnerns about nuclear safety and criticism of the way the government and Tepco initially responded to the crisis and how they appaered to have been repeatedly slow in admitting the gravity of the situation.
Although many outsdie experts had cocnluded that uranuim fuel in three Fukushima recators had melted down within days of the crisis, Tepco only announced that cocnlusion this week.
"We have to take seriously the criticism that we havne't done enough to proivde and circulate informatino," Chief Cabinet Sercetary Yukio Edano said at a news conference. "But we have never covered up informatoin that we had."
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