The Japanese government on Tuesday pledged to spend 47 billion yen (around $470 million) in a bid to contain massive amounts of toxic water accumulating at the leaking Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex.

The government move came as Japan's Nuclear Regulatory Authority's (NRA) chief Shunichi Tanaka blasted the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), for its second-rate efforts to fix a series of suspected radioactive leaks at the facility.

Tanaka said that in addition to TEPCO's only making quick, patchwork fixes to a series of radioactive water leaks, the utility had failed to pinpoint the cause of the leaks and when they first occurred, noting that the figures provided by TEPCO up until now had been, at best, "estimates."

The embattled utility is under fire from the NRA, the government and the wider global community, who have consistently pointed out that TEPCO is slow to release vital information regarding its myriad problems and the accuracy of its radioactivity measuring has once again been called into question.

Tanaka highlighted the fact that TEPCO had used equipment not capable of fully measuring the levels of radioactivity near a suspected leaking tank and near sites of contaminated groundwater.

He said that 1,800 millisieverts per hour of beta-ray radiation had been detected at a joint on one of tanks, which was 18 times higher than TEPCO originally reported.

The misreporting once again led to both a domestic and global backlash for the utilities' continuous ineptitude.

In addition, only two workers had initially been assigned by the utility to check and maintain 1,000 tanks hastily constructed to contain the 400 tons of contaminated water generated by the facility everyday, partly because contaminated groundwater is seeping into the damaged reactor buildings, TEPCO said.

The head of Japan's nuclear watchdog said the NRA will give stricter instructions to the embattled utility and will use its enforcing powers to make the company comply to "proper procedures. "

As TEPCO fails to contain the latest crisis, having admitted that 300 tons of highly-contaminated water has leaked into the adjacent Pacific Ocean, the government said Tuesday it would intervene to help the utility to both store and decontaminate the water, having first taken measures to stop what it suspects may be multiple toxic leaks at the facility.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said his administration would make public funds of about 47 billion yen available to tackle the crisis.

Abe, along with Industry Minister Toshimitsu Motegi and other members of the government's nuclear disaster task-force, approved the basic plan at a televised meeting on Tuesday.

The funds will be used in part to construct a 1.4 km-long underground frozen wall around four damaged reactors. The wall -- although the technique remains untested -- would, in theory, prevent groundwater from mixing with coolant water that becomes contaminated after it comes into contact with melted nuclear fuel.

Motegi said that about 32 billion yen (about $32 million) will be used to build the ice wall, including 14 billion yen coming from reserve funds under the fiscal 2013 budget.

The government said that under its current plans, the wall will be operational by the end of March 2015 and feasibility studies for the plan will soon be underway.

"We've drawn up a basic plan to achieve a fundamental solution to the problem of radioactive water, instead of reacting to each new problem as it comes up," Abe said at the meeting Tuesday.

He added that the world is watching Japan to see if it can successfully deal with the latest crisis and pledged that his administration would make an "all out effort" to comprehensively deal with the growing crisis.

Japan's nuclear regulators last Wednesday determined that the current crisis represents level three on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES), which describes the crisis as a "Serious Incident," involving severe radioactive contamination with serious health affects on the local population.

Abe's administration is seeking to spearhead the technical issues of maintaining current leaks and preventing further ones, as well as decontaminating massive amounts of water being stored at the facility, by introducing new detoxification equipment to procedures, the sources said, adding that TEPCO's input into proceedings is becoming largely irrelevant.

The ongoing crisis came at a time when Tokyo is bidding to host the 2020 Olympic Games and political pundits believe the government wants to be seen to be doing all it can to contain the current crisis at the tsunami-ravaged Daiichi facility located 250 km northeast of Tokyo, ahead of the International Olympic Committee deciding on September 7 whether Tokyo, Madrid or Istanbul will host the games.