Power outages at Japan's Fukushima plant, cooling continues

Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) said it was investigating the power outages at its No. 1 and No. 2 reactors in the Daiichi plant in Fukushima, badly damaged by the devastating March earthquake and tsunami.

The company is also considering dumping low-level radioactive water into the sea from another nearby plant slightly damaged by the March disasters.

A Tepco spokesman said it may pump into the ocean about 3,000 tonnes of sea water that washed over the Daini plant after the March 11 tsunami. It is about 10 km (6 miles) from the Daiichi plant, where Tepco is still battling to bring under control the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

It wants to dump the water from the Daini plant -- in cold shutdown following the quake -- to prevent further corrosion of equipment, although there is no immediate need to do so.

Tepco in April dumped more than 10,000 tonnes of contaminated water into the ocean from the Daiichi plant, sparking sharp criticism from neighbors South Korea and China.

The contaminated water at the Daini plant contains radioactive elements such as manganese and cobalt, which usually originate from metal corrosion, but elements such as iodine and caesium that originate from damaged nuclear fuel have not been detected, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director general of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) which oversees Tepco's activities.

Nishiyama told a news conference that Tepco wants to treat the water first to bring down radiation levels and that it is still considering the company's request.

(Reporting by Shinichi Saoshiro and Yoko Kubota, Editing by Jonathan Thatcher)