Fukushima's woes just keep mounting and mounting. On August 2013, The New Scientist reported that radioactive water was still leaking into the ocean from the crippled nuclear reactors at the Fukushima nuclear plant.
Japan's official nuclear watch-dog, the Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA), confirmed that Fukushima's nuclear plant was in a state if "emergency" and that the operator, Tokyo Electric Power Corporation (Tepco) was struggling to contain the leak.
In my book, Fukushima: The Death Knell for Nuclear Energy? (2012), I give numerous examples of how Tepco has been widely criticised for its failure to prepare for the 2011 tsunami and earthquake that devastated its Fukushima plant. Tepco was also castigated for its inept response to the reactor meltdown.
On August 20, 2013, The New York Times and many newspapers and media outlets around the world, reported another leak. This one involved 300 tonnes of highly radioactive water from storage tanks which had been built on the site of the ravaged Fukushima power plant. The radioactive release is so serious that the NRA declared that a "radioactive release incident" had occurred. 
A spokesperson for the Tepco management said that workers had attempted to place sandbags around the tank in order to stem the flow of this highly radioactive water. However, it conceded that the contaminated water could enter the ocean, adding to the tonnes of radioactive water already leaked into the ocean since the accident in March 2011.
The latest leak raises serious concerns about the stability and durability of the 1000 massive storage tanks, each capable of storing a thousand tonnes of water, which Tepco built a mere 500 metres from the ocean. These tanks were created to store the thousands of tonnes of water which have been used to cool the three reactors which were devastated by the earthquake and subsequent tsunami.
At the beginning of the 21st Century, Japan's Catholic Bishops published a message entitles "Reverence for Life". In that document, the Japanese bishops, while suggesting that safety was the top priority when dealing with nuclear energy, did not call for its abolition.
Yet, after the Fukushima accidents they now say that they regret their timidity and call on the Japanese Government to begin to phasing out nuclear energy.
(Taken from Vocation for Justice, Autumn 2013)