A wrecked water storage tank at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant on the west coast of Japan leaked 300 tons of highly radioactive water on Tuesday.
According to Reuters, if one were to stand just half a meter (about 1 foot 8 inches) from the leak, they would receive a radiation dose that is 5 times the annual average global limit for nuclear workers. Workers in close proximity to the leak would also develop symptoms such as vomiting and a drop in white blood cells in as little as ten hours.
Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) has classified the leak as a level 1 incident, and it is not the first time an event of this magnitude has occurred at the Fukushima plant. An earthquake and tsunami caused three reactor meltdowns in March 2011, and the site has never fully recovered from those damages.
A spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power, the nuclear plant’s operator, stated that a great deal of the contaminated water had already seeped into the soil and may leak to the ocean, The New York Times reports.