The crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant is seen in Okumamachi, Fukushima prefecture, northern Japan in this March 20, 2011 aerial photo taken by a small unmanned drone and released by AIR PHOTO SERVICE. From top to bottom, Unit 1 through Unit 4. UPI/Air Photo Service Co. Ltd. | License Photo

Tamura-city's evacuees undergoes a screening test after return from a brief visit back to their home inside the restricted zone of a 20 km radius from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant at the Furumichi gymnasium in Tamura, Fukushima prefecture, Japan, May 22, 2011. UPI/Keizo Mori | License Photo

TOKYO, June 3 (UPI) -- Engineers at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant are struggling with what to do with 15 million gallons of contaminated water used to cool damaged reactors.

The strategy of pouring massive amounts of water into the plant to cool the reactors has had severe side effects, with limited options on what to do with the contaminated water, The Washington Post reported Friday.


The contaminated water covers the basement floors, is leaking into the environment and constitutes a danger to any worker who goes near it, the newspaper said.

Engineers facing an unprecedented clean-up job must consider where they'll dispose of the water and how effectively they can treat it to remove radioactive particles.

The problem faced by Tokyo Electric Power Co. "resembles a board game with 16 squares and one empty spot," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer who directs the Nuclear Safety Project of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Workers must inject the reactor cores with water to keep them cool, but contaminated water leaking into the basement-level turbine rooms of the quake-damaged plant makes repair work all the harder as workers must continue to "feed and bleed" the reactors from above.

"They're just perpetuating the problem and making a bigger and bigger mess," said Lake Barrett, a nuclear engineer who directed the cleanup of the damaged Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania.

RELATED Fukushima stabilization deadline in doubt

Tepco said it plans to begin a process in which water is sucked from the basement rooms and treated with chemicals that remove its radioactivity, a process that creates a radioactive sludge byproduct that then must be dealt with.

The process "is not 100 percent, but it's better than nothing," Lochbaum said. "The alternative: you let the water simply evaporate and radioactivity carries to all parts far and wide."