Meanwhile back in the real world, the nuclear disaster at Fukushima is creeping back in to the headlines, for all the wrong reasons.
Japan’s nuclear watchdog says a leakage of highly radioactive water at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant could be the beginning of a new disaster – a series of leaks of contaminated water from storage tanks.
The operator of the plant has built hundreds of steel tanks to store massive amounts of radioactive water coming from three melted reactors, as well as underground water running into reactor and turbine basements.
Tokyo Electric Power Co said on Tuesday that about 300 tons (300,000 litres) of contaminated water leaked from one of the tanks. It said it hasn’t figured out how or where the water leaked, but suspects it did so through a seam.
The leak is the fifth, and the worst, since last year involving tanks of the same design at the wrecked Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, raising concerns that contaminated water could begin leaking from storage tanks one after another. …
Japan nuclear agency upgrades Fukushima alert level
Japan’s nuclear agency has upgraded the severity level of a radioactive water leak at the Fukushima plant from one to three on an international scale.
Highly radioactive water was found to be leaking from a storage tank into the ground at the plant on Monday. It was first classified as a level one incident on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (Ines). But Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority proposes elevating it to level three on the seven-point scale.
Fukushima operator pleads for international help as radiation crisis deepens
TEPCO, operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, admits it needs overseas help to contain the radioactive fallout, after 18 months of trying to control it internally. It comes after the latest leak at the facility was deemed a “serious incident.” …
The call comes after one of the 1,060 temporary tanks used to store highly contaminated water sprang a leak on Wednesday, discharging as much as 300 tons of radioactive liquid containing large amounts of cesium. Further tests revealed excessive radiation levels elsewhere in the facility. …
TEPCO has been slow in measuring the levels of radioactive elements that have flowed out of the station, as well as publishing its data. The company finally revealed this month that highly unsafe tritium and cesium levels had been detected in the seawater near the plant. A concentration of these elements could damage the marine environment and build up in marine life, possibly endangering humans further up the food chain. …
Most experts say that it could take between four decades and a century to eliminate the impact of the Fukushima disaster.
Water leaks at Fukushima could contaminate entire Pacific Ocean
…RT: An estimated 300 tonnes of contaminated water is spilling daily into the ocean. How come Tepco insists the leaks still pose no big threat to the environment?
HW: They are lying; they can’t face the reality of this situation. When have very serious quantities of radiation going into the Pacific Ocean. There is no medical or epidemiological or scientific basis for estimating how much damage this will cost. We are on entirely new ground here and this cannot go by without a serious impact on the entire human race. This is a terrible tragedy. …
Fukushima apocalypse: Years of ‘duct tape fixes’ could result in ‘millions of deaths’
Even the tiniest mistake during an operation to extract over 1,300 fuel rods at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan could lead to a series of cascading failures with an apocalyptic outcome, fallout researcher Christina Consolo told RT.
Fukushima operator TEPCO wants to extract 400 tons worth of spent fuel rods stored in a pool at the plant’s damaged Reactor No. 4. The removal would have to be done manually from the top store of the damaged building in the radiation-contaminated environment.
In the worst-case scenario, a mishandled rod may go critical, resulting in an above-ground meltdown releasing radioactive fallout with no way to stop it, said Consolo, who is the founder and host of Nuked Radio. But leaving the things as they are is not an option, because statistical risk of a similarly bad outcome increases every day, she said. …
Although fuel rod removal happens on a daily basis at the 430+ nuclear sites around the world, it is a very delicate procedure even under the best of circumstances. What makes fuel removal at Fukushima so dangerous and complex is that it will be attempted on a fuel pool whose integrity has been severely compromised. However, it must be attempted as Reactor 4 has the most significant problems structurally, and this pool is on the top floor of the building. …
We have endless releases into the Pacific Ocean that will be ongoing for not only our lifetimes, but our children’s’ lifetimes. We have 40 million people living in the Tokyo area nearby. We have continued releases from the underground corium that reminds us it is there occasionally with steam events and huge increases in radiation levels. Across the Pacific, we have at least two peer-reviewed scientific studies so far that have already provided evidence of increased mortality in North America, and thyroid problems in infants on the west coast states from our initial exposures.
We have increasing contamination of the food chain, through bioaccumulation and biomagnification. And a newly stated concern is the proximity of melted fuel in relation to the Tokyo aquifer that extends under the plant. If and when the corium reaches the Tokyo aquifer, serious and expedient discussions will have to take place about evacuating 40 million people from the greater metropolitan area. As impossible as this sounds, you cannot live in an area which does not have access to safe water.
See also “Fukushima’s Radioactive Water Leak: What You Should Know”.
Fossil fuels will kill the planet. Conventional nuclear energy can never be safe. Renewable sources (and/or some breakthrough in fusion) are the only viable alternative. Any rational government would be investing massively in renewable energy R&D.
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