PTI reported that struggling hard to contain Japan's worst atomic crisis in decades, workers at the quake hit Fukushima nuclear plant started building a steel barrier to prevent toxic water from seeping into the sea, while authorities banned planting rice in soil contaminated by radiation.

The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, also continued to pump nitrogen, an inert gas, into the No 1 reactor to prevent more hydrogen blasts at the facility, which was rocked by two such radiation leaking explosions last month.

Its engineers launched the task of building a 120 meter wide wall of steel sheets to form a silt curtain for the radioactive material.

The workers also stepped up efforts to remove highly radioactive water from a tunnel of reactor No 2, as they tried to cool their cores and plug leaks.

TEPCO said that contaminated water in a concrete tunnel of the Number 2 reactor has risen 10 centimeters since leakage of the water into the ocean stopped.

Along with efforts to stop the leakage, the utility also released about 9,000 tonnes of water containing relatively low level radioactive materials into the sea to free up room to pool more contaminated water that has flooded the No 2 reactor's turbine building and a tunnel outside it.

TEPCO said it will fly a small unmanned helicopter to survey the plant, possibly from tomorrow, depending on the weather. The drone is expected to capture images of damaged installations at the Nos 1 to 4 reactors.

(Sourced from PTI)