Fukushima Disaster Continues
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/20/fukushima-leak-nuclear-pacific
Frantic efforts to contain radioactive leaks at the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have been dealt another blow after its operator said about 300 tonnes of highly contaminated water had seeped out of a storage tank at the site.
The leak is the worst such incident since the March 2011 meltdown and is separate from the contaminated water leaks, also of about 300 tonnes a day, reported recently.
Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) said it did not know how the water leaked out or where it had leaked to, but it believed that the spillage had not flowed into the Pacific ocean.
Tepco’s spokesman, Masayuki Ono, said the water had seeped into the ground after breaching a concrete and sandbag barrier around the tank. Workers were pumping out the puddle and removing the remaining water from the tank, he added. Despite efforts to contain the spillage, the leak is already the most severe since the crisis began.
This is the worst leak since the 2011 disaster. Fukushima after the disastrous tsunami was a major disaster. It was on the news every day.
Now it’s slow motion disaster. Leakage continues into the ocean while experts solemnly intone that we shouldn’t worry because the ocean is big.
This is business ethics at its worse. A nuclear power plant was built on the coast near an earthquake fault. The safety systems we were repeatedly assured would never fail failed. We don’t find out from the government or the industry that there is a problem. The news media discovers the serious nature of the crisis. A corrupt industry downplays the incident with government connivance. As the disaster worsens, the lies and incompetence become more and more obvious, and gradually it becomes obvious that when confronted by a disaster, the nuclear industry simply has no idea how to fix the problem. This is contrary to what the industry has been saying for decades.
Remember, just repeat, “Nuclear industry is the future. It’s safe and cost effective. Only a handful of people have died in the rare nuclear accident compared to thousands in the coal industry. It’s only fearmongers and environmental cranks who oppose this future.”
See, after a while you feel better about everything?
James Pilant
From around the web.
From the web site, Fire Earth.
http://feww.wordpress.com/tag/fukushima-nuclear-disaster/
Highly radioactive water from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is leaking into the ocean creating an “emergency” that the operator, TEPCO, may be unable to contain, said an official from the country’s nuclear watchdog.
“This contaminated groundwater has breached an underground barrier, is rising toward the surface and is exceeding legal limits of radioactive discharge, Shinji Kinjo, head of a Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA) task force,” told Reuters.
Tokyo Electric Power Co’s “sense of crisis is weak,” Kinjo said. “This is why you can’t just leave it up to Tepco alone” to deal with the ongoing disaster.
“Right now, we have an emergency,” he said.
A total of up to 40 trillion becquerels of radioactive tritium may have leaked into the ocean since the disaster, said TEPCO, insisting that it was within legal limits.
From the web site, The Bold Corsican Flame.
http://theboldcorsicanflame.wordpress.com/tag/fukushima-nuclear-disaster/
Two and a half years after the Fukashima tragedy Japan does not want to admit how serious it is, but it is obvious the drastic environmental implications are to follow, Harvey Wasserman, journalist and advocate for renewable energy, told RT.
RT: Japanese officials have admitted a leak at Fukushima has been happening for two years and is worse than earlier thought. Why did it take so long to evaluate the actual repercussions of the tragedy and take decisive measures to tackle them?
HW: The Japanese authorities have been covering up the true depth of the disaster because they don’t want to embarrass themselves and the global nuclear industry and they are trying to open up another nuclear plant in Japan. When the Japanese people now find out that the accident is worse than we thought and they have been leaking many tons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean for almost two and a half years, this is a catastrophe. Tokyo Electric has no idea how to control this accident. This is absolutely terrifying after two and a half years. To find out that these reactors have been out of control, now that they can’t control this they don’t know what’s going on. This is not a primitive backward country; this is Japan with advanced technology. It has very serious implications for nuclear power all over the world.
RT: Why the plant’s operator failed to contain the leak?
HW: Because they don’t know what to do. This has never happened before. You have three explosions; you have four nuclear reactors that are severely compromised. No one ever planned for this. This is an apocalyptic event. This is something that could contaminate the entire Pacific Ocean. It is extremely serious. The reality is that Tokyo Electric does not know what is happening and does not know how to control what is going on. Our entire planet is at risk here. This is two and a half years after these explosions and they are still in the dark. It’s terrifying.
From the web site, Vernon Radiation Safety.
http://vernonradiationsafety.wordpress.com/2013/05/13/fukushima-disaster-may-13-2013/
The New York Times has recently reported
that the workers at Fukushima are running out of places to store the
water that has been used to cool the radioactive waste. The water is
highly radioactive, and is leaking from its storage tanks at the rate of
75 gallons per minute. In other news,
the Japanese government is changing the threshold for danger so that
people may return. Thus, doses of less than 20mS/y are now acceptable.
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