Massive, uncontained leak at Fukushima is pouring over 710 billion becquerels of radioactive materials into atmosphere
Massive, uncontained leak at Fukushima is pouring over 710 billion becquerels of radioactive materials into atmosphere ~
The tsunami-caused nuclear accident at the Fukushima power station in
Japan is the disaster that never ends, as new reports indicate that a
wealth of new radioactive materials have been spewed into the
atmosphere.
According to Singapore-based news outlet AsiaOne,
the Tokyo Electric Power Co., which owns the multi-nuclear reactor power
station at Fukushima, announced April 6 that some 120 tons of water
that had been contaminated with radioactive substances had leaked from
an underground storage facility at the No. 1 atomic power plant site.
Running out of storage room?
TEPCO officials announced the leak late in the day April 5, a Friday,
"but said measures to address the problem had not been taken for two
days because the cause had not been identified," AsiaOne reported. The
company "assumed the water was still leaking."
According to
company officials TEPCO estimates that the leaked water contains about
710 billion becquerels of radioactive substances, making it the largest
leak of radioactive materials ever at the plant. Discovery of the leak
led the company to transfer about 13,000 tons of polluted, radioactive
water in the questionable storage area to a neighboring underground
storage unit.
That storage unit, TEPCO said, is 60 meters long,
53 meters wide and six meters deep. It is pool-like in structure and
has a three-layer waterproof sheet with a concrete cover.
According to the company, water that has leaked from damaged nuclear
reactors is run through filters and additional devices in order to
remove radioactive elements. The water is then stored in facilities for
low-level contaminated water.
TEPCO began using the storage
facility Feb. 1. As of April 5, 13,000 tons of radioactive water was
being stored there - very close to the 14,000-ton limit.
More leaking contamination
AsiaOne reported that water samples taken by TEPCO from soil
surrounding the damaged facility a few days later showed 35 becquerels
per cubic centimeter of radioactive substances, which is abnormal.
"Safe" levels of becquerels is 300 per kilogram of water, according to
New Scientist.
However, TEPCO officials did not publicly
announce their findings right away after not finding any other unusual
changes in water quality data, such as chloride concentration.
On April 5, the report said, two days after the problem was first
noticed, water with 6,000 becquerels per cubic centimeter of radioactive
substances was located between the first and second layers of the
waterproof sheet, which alerted TEPCO engineers and plant officials that
a leak had occurred.
Per AsiaOne:
As the sheet's
layers were joined when the facility was constructed, TEPCO assumed that
the sheet may have been damaged, or that a mistake had been made during
construction. An average of about 400 tons a day of groundwater seeped
into buildings housing nuclear reactors and turbines, increasing the
quantity of polluted water.
The latest problem will create a
storage shortage; TEPCO officials said storage of polluted water at the
facility will be reduced from 53,000 tons to 40,000 - a significant
reduction. That will make it necessary for the power company to go over
procedures for handling polluted water, which will include increasing
the number of storage units.
The disaster that keeps on giving
TEPCO said earlier this month it expected the water transfer would take about five days to complete.
"As the height of the water storage facility is relatively low, we
think it's unlikely that the polluted water mixed into underground water
and reached the sea 800 meters away," said Masayuki Ono, the acting
chief of TEPCO's nuclear facilities department, at a press conference
April 6.
The plant was damaged by a huge earthquake-caused
tsunami March 11, 2011. At the time of the incident, three of the
plant's atomic reactors were shut down: No. 4 had been de-fueled and
Nos. 5 and 6 were in cold shut-down for maintenance.
The
remaining three automatically shut down at the time of the accident and
emergency generators came on to keep coolant systems operating.
by J. D. Heyes
@ http://www.naturalnews.com/040058_Fukushima_radioactive_nuclear_leak.html#ixzz2RRlYogTX
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