Very high levels of radiation detected in water leaking from a reactor at a nuclear plant in Japan dealt a new setback Sunday to efforts to bring the stricken facility under control

Very high levels of radiation detected in water leaking from a reactor at a nuclear plant in Japan dealt a new setback Sunday to efforts to bring the stricken facility under control.
  
The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi plant said it had detected radiation levels 10 million times higher than usual in leaked water at reactor two, as white steam continued to rise from the tsunami-battered facility. The radiation level was 1,000 millisieverts per hour, making it too dangerous to remain at the reactor turbine building and forcing the evacuation of workers there, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power said.
  
"It is an extremely high figure," nuclear safety agency spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama said of the latest reading. "There is a high possibility that (the water) came from the reactor."
  
Amid concerns that fuel rod vessels or their valves and pipes are leaking, chief government spokesman Yukio Edano admitted progress at the site was slow.

There was also a warning from the head of the world's atomic watchdog agency that Japan's nuclear emergency could go on for weeks, if not months, given the enormous damage to the plant, The New York Times reported.
  
Japanese authorities were still unsure about whether the reactor cores and spent fuel were covered with the water needed to cool them, Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the newspaper.
  
Urgent efforts to pump away pools of highly radioactive water near the reactors began Sunday, after several workers suffered radiation burns while installing cables as part of work to restore critical reactor cooling systems.

Slow progress at the Fukushima site has added to the gloom hanging over the country since a 9.0-magnitude quake struck on March 11, sending a huge tsunami crashing into the northeast coast in Japan's worst post-war disaster.

The confirmed death toll stood at 10,489 Sunday, with 16,621 missing and 2,777 injured, the National Police Agency said. The tsunami knocked out cooling systems for the six reactors at the Fukushima plant, leading to suspected partial meltdowns in three of them. Hydrogen explosions and fires have also ripped through the facility.
 
A worst-case scenario feared at the number-three reactor is that the fuel inside the reactor core -- a volatile uranium-plutonium mix -- has already started to burn its way through its steel pressure vessel. Fire engines have hosed huge amounts of seawater onto the plant in a bid to keep the fuel rods inside reactor cores and pools from being exposed to the air, and prevent a full meltdown.

Radioactive vapour from the plant has contaminated farm produce and dairy products in the region, leading to shipment halts in Japan as well as the United States, European Union, China and a host of other nations.