Embattled Japanese power company chief hospitalized due to 'fatigue'

Tokyo (CNN) -- The president of the embattled utility that owns the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has been hospitalized due to "fatigue and stress," the company said Wednesday.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. President Masataka Shimizu was hospitalized Tuesday. The company has not released further details about his condition.

Shimizu made a public apology several days after a March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems at the plant. The last time he was spotted in public was at a March 13 news conference.

Reporters peppered company officials with questions about the president's whereabouts Sunday. A spokesman said Shimizu had been staying inside the company's Tokyo headquarters.

His physical condition had been on the decline from overwork, the spokesman said Sunday.

News of Shimizu's hospitalization comes a day after an inspector for Japan's nuclear safety agency described austere working conditions at the plant.


Workers were sleeping in conference rooms, corridors, and stairwells on leaded mats intended to keep radiation at bay, safety inspector Kazuma Yokota said.

They were also eating only two meals each day -- a carefully rationed breakfast of 30 crackers and vegetable juice, and for dinner, a ready-to-eat meal or something out of a can.

"My parents were washed away by the tsunami, and I still don't know where they are," one worker wrote in an e-mail that was verified as authentic by a spokesman for the Tokyo Electric Power Co.

"Crying is useless," said another e-mail. "If we're in hell now, all we can do is crawl up towards heaven."

In a statement released March 18, Shimizu said the company was taking the crisis seriously.

"We sincerely apologize to all the people living in the surrounding area of the power station and people in Fukushima Prefecture, as well as to the people of society for causing such great concern and nuisance," he said.

Meanwhile, tests revealed radioactive iodine at more than 3,000 times the normal level in ocean water near the plant -- a new high, Japan's nuclear safety agency said Wednesday.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said monitoring data collected Tuesday afternoon detected the I-131 isotope at 3,355 times the normal level.

The sample was taken 330 meters (1,080 feet) away from one of the plant's water discharge points, the agency said.

Radiation readings from seawater outside the plant have fluctuated. They spiked Sunday, then dropped a day later.

Officials did not pinpoint a particular cause for the higher readings.

But officials and experts have noted that workers at the plant face a difficult balancing act as they struggle to keep reactors cool and prevent radioactive water from leaking into the ocean.

Water has been a key weapon in the battle to stave off a meltdown at the facility. Workers have pumped and sprayed tons of water to keep the plant's radioactive fuel from overheating, and the plant is running out of room to store the now-contaminated liquid.

"They have a problem where the more they try to cool it down, the greater the radiation hazard as that water leaks out from the plant," said Jim Walsh, an international security expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.