An alarm was triggered at a onetime nuclear fuel manufacturing facility Wednesday after radioactive substances leaked from materials that were being transferred at a facility operated by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) in Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture, officials with the company said.
All nine of the workers who were in the room when the radiation leak occurred were cleared with no ill affects to their health, JAEA official Shinichi Nishikawa told a news conference.
Sensors outside the facility, called the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Engineering Laboratories, did not record abnormal radiation levels, public broadcaster NHK reported.
Officials later told the news conference that they would begin processing the site as soon as possible to determine how much radioactive material had been leaked and if it was still leaking.
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The mixed oxide fuel (MOX) and plutonium was being kept in a sealed glove box container for future research.
The alarm is set up in an area of the facility where MOX nuclear fuel made by extracting plutonium from spent nuclear fuel and mixing it with uranium was once produced.
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