Radioactive water being used to cool the shattered Fukushima nuclear reactors is rising worryingly quickly, according to an analysis of the latest data from the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the plant’s operator.

Bloomberg reports that the water could overflow from basements and service trenches as soon as Monday 6 June, pouring isotopes into the sea.

“Solving the problem of contaminated water is critical,” Tetsuo Ito, the head of the Atomic Energy Research Institute at Kinki University, told Bloomberg.

The reactors’ cooling systems were damaged after the 11 March tsunami triggered the disaster at the plant. TEPCO has been forced to pump more than 100,000 tonnes of water directly into the reactors to prevent them from overheating (for more details, see previous posts on the water problem)

Meanwhile, TEPCO has released pictures of the storage tanks and purification system (see right) that it hopes will soon allow them to deal with the radioactive water.

For full coverage of the Fukushima disaster, go to Nature’s news special.

For a selection of our coverage in Japanese, see Nature Asia Pacific.