After admitting in July that crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has indeed been pouring contaminated radioactive water into the ocean waters, it was just a matter of time as to when the world will know just how much toxic liquid it actually releases. On Wednesday, the information was released and it was like World War II again. Since being damaged in 2011, the Fukushima facility has leaked a whopping 300 tonnes of radioactive water daily into the ocean.

"It is an urgent problem," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told a ministerial meeting in Tokyo on Wednesday. "We will not leave this to Tepco, but put together a government strategy. We will direct Tepco to make sure there is a swift and multi-faceted approach in place."

Tepco is the operator of the facility that was terribly damaged by the tsunami that followed the magnitude 9 earthquake of March 2011.

The leak, which is enough to fill an Olympic swimming pool in a week, according to the Times of India, has been spilling into the Pacific Ocean for two and a half years now.

"This is not an issue we can let Tepco take complete responsibility of," Mr Abe told a group of cabinet ministers. "We must deal with this at the national level."

Yoshihide Suga, chief cabinet secretary, said at a press conference that he believed Tepco was doing all it can to contain the situation ever since the facility got busted in 2011.

"But from the point of view of those in the disaster zone and the people of Japan, it does not seem to be progressing very fast," he said. "The government feels it should step forward and support the management of the problem."

Instead of evaluating atomic plants' safety for restart, activists both in and out of Japan want the Nuclear Regulation Authority to immediately shift its focus instead to the potential crisis the leaking radioactive water from the Fukushima plant could bring.

The activists, in a statement, "are demanding that the NRA prioritize dealing with the radioactive emissions into the marine environment, and that work on restart which is taking away from NRA's foremost mandate be suspended."

According to the Nikkei newspaper, Mr Abe had instructed METI Minister Toshimitsu Motegi to take the lead in the clean up, a project that could cost Japan 40 billion yen ($410 million).

Japan plans to freeze the soil to keep groundwater out of reactor buildings.

"Right now there are no details (of the project yet). There's no blueprint, no nothing yet, so there's no way we can scrutinise it," Shinji Kinjo, head of the task force set up by the nuclear regulator to deal with the water issue, was quoted by Times of India.