A general view of a building of Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is seen from a bus during a media tour at the plant in Fukushima prefecture in this June 12, 2013 file photo.
Credit: Reuters/Noboru Hashimoto/Pool/FilesTOKYO | Mon Sep 2, 2013 12:50am EDT
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan plans to craft measures as soon as Tuesday on how to handle the worsening contaminated water problem at the Fukushima nuclear plant, a senior government official said on Monday.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a meeting of government and ruling coalition officials that the government would present a comprehensive package of measures to a task force dealing with the nuclear disaster, Suga's deputy, Katsunobu Kato, told a news conference.
Amid a series of disclosures of radioactive water leaks from the plant, which was crippled by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, the government is moving to take a more direct role in the clean-up as concerns grow over the ability of the embattled operator, Tokyo Electric Co, to handle the legacy of the world's worst atomic disaster in a quarter century.
Suga said the government aims to do everything it can to address the problem, including using existing budgetary funds, according to Kato.
(Reporting by Sumio Ito; Writing by William Mallard; Editing by Shinichi Saoshiro)
