HOUSE OVERSIGHT 019415 A series of pits Tepco dug to store some of the water also began leaking earlier this year, forcing workers to transfer the water into the steel tanks. Experts have said they suspect that more contaminated water is seeping out from under the melted-down reactors into the groundwater and the Pacific. Elevated levels of radioactive cesium in surrounding waters seem to confirm those suspicions. Tepco has said those leaks are not directly from beneath the reactors, but from maintenance tunnels that run along the coast and remain contaminated from the early days of the disaster. But it also acknowledges that the water beneath the reactors is extremely contaminated, and experts say that if it does get into the ocean, it will surpass even the leaks that occurred in the disaster's early days. "That prospect scares me," Michio Aoyama, a senior scientist in the Oceanography and Geochemistry Research Department at the government-affiliated Meteorological Research Institute, said in an interview this month. "It's the ultimate, worst-case scenario," Professor Aoyama said. Back to top The New Nuclear Craze Mark Bittman - New York Times There is a new discussion about nuclear energy, prompted by well-founded concerns about carbon emissions and fueled by a pro-nuclear documentary called "Pandora's Promise." Add a statement by James E. Hansen — who famously sounded the alarm on climate change — and, of course, industry propaganda, and presto: We Love Nukes. Before we all become pro-nuclear greens, however, you've got to ask three questions: Is nuclear power safe and clean? Is it economical? And are there better alternatives? No, no and yes. So let's not swap the pending environmental disaster of climate change for another that may be equally risky. Despite all-out efforts and international cooperation, Fukushima, which scared Germany right out of the nuclear power business, still isn't under control. Proponents of nuclear power promise