Fukushima Groundwater MASSIVELY Contaminated
“Is TEPCO competent?”
Let’s review current developments. They took the web cam off line last weekend due to the ‘smoke’ incident. Now they are saying there’s another ‘leak’. Transparency is not a concept they believe in or understand.
______________________________________________________
The Science of Radiation Exposure
*Note: Single radiation dose of 2,000 millisieverts (200,000 millirems) and above causes serious illness. See also exposure list below.
Half-life of some radioactive elements
[NOTE: Half-life is the time taken for a radioactive substance to decay by half.] * Cesium-134 ~ 2 years * Cesium-137 ~ 30 years * Iodine-131 ~ 8 days * Plutonium-239 ~ 24,200 years * Ruthenium-103 ~ 39 days [Ruthenium is a fission product of uranium-235.] * Ruthenium-106 ~ 374 days * Strontium-90 ~ 28.85 years [Strontium-90 is a product of nuclear fission and is found in large amounts in spent nuclear fuel and in radioactive waste from nuclear reactors.] * Uranium-234 ~ 246,000 years * Uranium-235 ~ 703.8 million years * Uranium-238 ~ 4.468 billion years
New radioactive leak raises questions
Highly radioactive water was found leaking into the sea from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Wednesday. It’s now been revealed that contaminated water levels in the No. 3 reactor’s turbine building were already alarmingly high by Sunday.
Tokyo Electric Power Company plugged the leak with concrete after it found highly radioactive water flowing into the sea through a pit.
Radioactive cesium 620,000 times higher than the government-set safety limit was detected from the leaked water.
The contaminated water was streaming from the outlet of a pipe for electric cables.
The leak is thought to have stemmed from pooled water in the turbine building of the No. 3 reactor.
TEPCO says it found that waste water levels in the facility had risen to a point where leakage was feared on Sunday.
The company says it doesn’t know when the leak began, but that it will investigate if the monitoring of water levels was appropriate. The problem raises the question of whether the utility wasn’t able to prevent the latest leak.
The utility is planning to soon begin transferring radioactive water accumulated in the turbine building to a provisional storage facility. It is now checking for other possible leaks.
Highly radioactive water poured into the sea from a crack in a pit outside the No.2 reactor in early April.
On Thursday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the renewed leaking of radioactive materials into the sea was extremely regrettable.
He says the government apologizes to the local residents, the fishing industry and neighboring countries.
Edano also said he had instructed TEPCO to investigate how the leak occurred, and that the company must take measures to prevent another episode.
Thursday, May 12, 2011 13:09 +0900 (JST)
Copyright NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation)
