Workers prepared Sunday to block the leakage of highly radioactive water into the sea from the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant by injecting polymeric powder that can absorb 50 times its volume of water, the government's nuclear safety agency said.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, meanwhile, told a press conference that it could take several months before radiation stops leaking from the plant.

The plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the same day that two workers in their 20s who had been missing since the devastating March 11 quake and tsunami that crippled the power station were found dead in the basement of a reactor turbine building last Wednesday.