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Workers at the Fukushima nuclear plant on June 12, 2013/AFP

World

Man who battled Fukushima disaster dies of cancer

Soon after he underwent surgery for cancer, Yoshida was felled by a brain haemorrhage and underwent another operation in July 2012, TEPCO said.

He was still employed by the company at the time of his death.

The disaster saw three reactors go into meltdown, spewing radiation into the air, sea and food chain in the worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

No deaths have been directly attributed to the radiation released by the accident, but it has displaced tens of thousands of people and left large areas of land uninhabitable, possibly for decades.

The plant itself remains fragile, with TEPCO struggling to deal with the tonnes of radioactive water left over from efforts to cool molten reactor cores.

TEPCO said Tuesday toxic radioactive substances in groundwater have rocketed over the past three days and engineers did not know where the leak was coming from.

Samples taken on Monday showed levels of possibly cancer causing caesium 134 were more than 90 times higher than on Friday, at 9,000 becquerels per litre, TEPCO revealed.

Levels of caesium 137 stood at 18,000 becquerels per litre, 86 times higher than at the end of last week, the utility said.

Scientists say fully decommissioning the plant will take 30 to 40 years.

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