Fukushima water release: 2 workers hospitalised after accidentally being sprayed with radioactive materials

The incident occurred on Wednesday when a group of workers was cleaning the piping at a filtering facility key to the treatment of the radioactive waste water

All were wearing full face masks, and tests showed none had ingested radioactive particles. None have shown any health issues, according to the plant operator

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A Tokyo Electric Power Co employee wearing a protective suit and mask uses a survey meter near storage tanks for radioactive water. Photo: Reuters/File

Published: 9:21am, 27 Oct 2023Updated: 3:46pm, 27 Oct 2023

Two workers at the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant were hospitalised after accidentally getting sprayed with liquid laced with radioactive materials, officials said on Thursday.

The incident occurred on Wednesday when a group of workers was cleaning the piping at the Advanced Liquid Processing System. The ALPS is a waste water filtering facility that is key to the treatment of the radioactive waste water that accumulates on the plant and its ongoing discharge into the sea.

Four workers were cleaning the piping when a drainage hosepipe suddenly came off. They were splashed with the tainted liquid waste, which was not the waste water running inside the system.

All four were wearing full face masks, and test results showed none of them had ingested radioactive particles. None have shown any health issues, according to plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (Tepco).

A fifth worker, who was also assigned to the cleaning work, was temporarily away when the accident occurred.

Tepco began the controversial waste water discharges on August 24 from Fukushima Daiichi, which suffered triple meltdowns following the 2011 quake and tsunami.

The discharges, which are expected to continue for decades, have been strongly opposed by fishing groups and neighbouring countries, including China, which immediately banned imports of all Japanese seafood.