The continuing crisis also underscores the unprecedented scale and complexity of the problems facing Fukushima: a plant ravaged by a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and 45-foot tsunami, and three reactors and four spent fuel pools with no proper cooling system yet and containing more long-lived radioactivity than the Chernobyl reactor, according to the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, based in Takoma Park, Md.

This is why, despite the damage caused by the efforts so far, Japanese officials have little choice but to continue down the feed-and-bleed path. “The worst-case scenario is that a meltdown makes the plant’s site a permanent grave,” said Tetsuo Iguchi, a professor in the department of quantum engineering at Nagoya University. “In a small island nation like Japan, that’s just not an option. That is why the government is trying to prevent a meltdown at any cost.”

The events have been a quick turn for the worse for the Japanese government. Just last week, officials at Tokyo Electric Power Company, the Fukushima Daiichi plant’s operator, repeatedly hailed the extension of electrical wires to the plant, spoke of resuming electrically operated cooling systems and offered assurances that the situation would not get worse.

But late last week, three workers in a building next to Reactor No. 3 were injured when they stepped in contaminated water. Radioactive water was later discovered at two other reactors, making some areas of the reactor buildings dangerous for workers to approach.

Image A breakdown of the contamination at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant. Credit... The New York Times

Some of that water in the reactor structures also appears to be leaking out through damaged pipes or vessels, forming highly contaminated pools at the bottom of the turbine buildings adjacent to the reactors. On Tuesday, workers were forced to divert their attention to readying sandbags and pumps after the contaminated water was discovered in a tunnel leading close to the sea.