Kyodo News, May 28, 2014: [Tepco] has identified the location of a leak at the bottom of the container in the No. 1 reactor [...] water was leaking from a joint in a pipe [...] The metal bellow joint is likely to have been corroded ["destruction of materials from chemical reaction"] by seawater [the Tepco official said.] The official denied the possibility that the leakage was caused because the earthquake damaged equipment. He said the company will continue to investigate if there are other areas of leakage nearby.

Jiji Press, May 28, 2014: Tepco said it had confirmed water was leaking from a pipe in the reactor containment vessel inside the plant’s No. 1 reactor building. The utility used a camera-mounted remote-controlled robot [...] water was leaking from the vessel’s bottom near the pipe, at a rate of up to 3.2 tons per hour [76.8 tons/day]. In the No. 1 to No. 3 reactor buildings, highly contaminated water leaking from the vessels has amassed, preventing work to remove nuclear fuel.

NHK, May 27, 2014: The water is leaking from a point on a pipe leading to the containment vessel. An image taken by a robot probe shows a black area on the brown pipe. The leak point is above a donut-shaped unit called a suppression chamber where a robotic investigation detected flows of contaminated water last November. The chamber is in the lower part of the containment vessel. [...] A contaminated water leak has also been found in the containment vessel of the Number 3 reactor. Officials say they will now investigate the suppression chamber and other parts of the Number 2 reactor.

Watch footage of the Unit 1 suppression chamber survey published on May 28 here

Watch NHK’s broadcast here

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