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

PHOTO / Humanity Healing Network

Lock the Mid North Coast - Latest News

As you may know there are several large mining projects are being planned for the Kempsey, Bellingen and Nambucca local government areas by companies such as Anchor Resources, Emu Nickel and Precious Metal Resources. This newsletter is to help keep everyone updated on the latest developments since our initial public meeting in Macksville  

Local Council Elections 

We have recently invited all Council Candidates in the Nambucca, Bellingen and Kempsey electorates to complete a short online questionnaire to state publicly where they stand on the issue of mining before your community votes on Saturday Sept 8th. We are publishing the responses as they come in and they make for interesting reading.  The reponses can be found on our website here 

http://lockthemidnorthcoast.com.au/

 council responses

Emu Nickel fail to raise $60 million for Hillgrove Antimony mine
We may have just had our first big win!! But it maybe only a temporary one. As you know Emu nickel were poised to buy the nasty Straits Antimony mine at Hillgrove and swing back into major production (see below) http://www.emunickel.

However we have just discovered they failed to raise the $60 million capital required for the project http://www.

metalbulletin.com/Article/

3026667/Emu-Nickel-fails-to-raise-full-60m-for-Hillgrove-

antimony-mine.html

We do wonder if dragging up the history of the Hillgrove Mine had anything to do with this ?

Sad history of Antimony mining revealed at Kempsey

Macleay River valley NSW (Photo credit: Wikipedia)We have recently uncovered a lot more information about the extent of the toxic spills into the Macleay River from the Hillgrove Antimony mine which underscores why we are campaigning so hard to try and stop further Antimony mining that could impact on the catchment areas of the Macleay, Nambucca and Bellingen rivers. We urge everyone to read the Kempsey Council minutes which shows the impact and cost to the community that the Antimony Mining operation at Hillgrove has caused over the years, and the serious risk to public health that it continues to pose.
http://www.kempsey.nsw.gov.au/

pdfsCnlMtgs/search.asp?

searWords=antimony&Send=Go

Precious Metal Resources lodge two more exploration applications 

Showing their intentions to secure all the available group1 Mineral Exploration licenses in their search for Antimony and Gold, Precious Metal Resources Pty Ltd have just lodged two new exploration applications for Group1 Metalic Minerals in the Kempsey/Armidale area. (ELA 4607 and ELA 4608)

More details can be found by using the NSW Goverments online titles viewing application MinView

http://www.resources.nsw.gov.au/geological/online-services/minview

Sharyn Munro to speak at Bellingen on Friday Sept 7th

“Rich Land, Wasteland has to be the most important book for everybody to read in 2012″

For nearly a year Sharyn Munro travelled through rural Australia, visiting communities in coal-mining areas. She found a war zone.

Here, ‘at the coalface’, towns and districts are dying — homeowners and farmers forced out by mining, broken in spirit and in health, or else under threat, in limbo and battling the might of the multinationals. Incidences of asthma, cancers and heart attacks show alarming spikes in communities close to coal mines and coal power stations, yet the government seems powerless (or unwilling) to act.

Notice for a meeting about Sharyn Munro's book: Rich land, Wasteland (Photo credit: kateausburn)Once reliable rivers and aquifers are drying up or become polluted, once fertile agricultural land is becoming unusable. But the big mostly foreign-owned mining companies continue to push on with their coal rush and government continues to assist and protect them: ever more mining licences are granted, ever bigger mines are opened. In this life-changing book, 

Sharyn exposes the real story of coal: how people are hurting, and rebelling, as coal pushes into hitherto unthinkable areas; how the true costs outweigh any benefits; and how all of us will ultimately pay the price.

Come and hear Sharyn talk at the Bellingen Public Library on Friday 7th Sept at 10am - It's a free event.

http://lockthemidnorthcoast.

com.au/event/rich-land-waste-

land-book-launch-at-bellingen/

Seed Group Meetings

Since our initial public meeting at Macksville we have held several well attended 'seed group' meetings for the Nambucca and Bellingen groups to develop campaign strategies.  If you would like to volunteer and particapte in the future development of the Lock the Mid North Coast campaign we would love to hear from you and you can discuss idea's and find out about our future meetings on the members forums here (you must be sign up as a member for free first) 

http://lockthemidnorthcoast.com.au/forumz/forum/members-forum/

As Tony Abbott made his way over the Bellinger River on Sunday, chants of “Lock the Gate, Lock the Gate” rang out. Riding alongside Member for Cowper, Luke Hartsuyker, Mr Abbott was participating in the NAB Cycle Challenge during a weekend visit to the Coffs Coast. The peaceful and colourful anti-mining protest took place as the riders came off Lavenders Bridge, with around 80 men, women and children taking up the chant.

Many were part of a newly formed group, ‘Lock the Gate Mid North Coast’ which is opposing several large scale antimony and gold mining projects on the Dorrigo plateau and in the Nambucca and Bellinger Valley.
Spokesman for Lock the Gate, Glen Schaefer, said the group wanted to take the opportunity to let Tony Abbott know their feelings. “We wanted to take the opportunity to let Tony Abbott know that the Bellingen and Nambucca communities are strongly opposed to any form of mining in our catchment areas that could potentially contaminate the Macleay, Nambucca, Kalang or Bellinger Rivers, or harm our prime agricultural lands,” Mr Schaefer said.

But Mr Hartsuyker, who invited Mr Abbott as a special guest on the charity ride, was not impressed with the protest.

Read the full story here
 http://www.coffscoastindependent.com.au/story/188840/mining-protestors-greet-abbott-on-ride/?cs=393

About Us

Lock the Mid North Coast is a large group of local residents from Bellingen Shire, Coffs Harbour City, Clarence Valley and Nambucca Shire local government areas of NSW who have joined together to prevent destructive mining projects. There are now over 2,600 members of our Facebook group and nearly 1,500 local residents and land owners are on our mailing list.  

For further details about the mining projects happening in our area including document downloads, video's, news and maps about all the various mining projects happening in our region please visit our web site at: http://lockthemidnorthcoast.com.au

Enquiries: Glen Schaefer

M:0411 389 265

E: info@lockthemidnorthcoast.com.au
Related articles

• A Wall Set In Antimony (cellyc.wordpress.com)
• Metz gorge: an impressive view in a historic setting (pifflelab.com)
• Lock the Gate (mezzaonthehill.blogspot.com)
• Mine's toxic flow gives river users a scare. (mezzaonthehill.blogspot.com)

Mine's toxic flow gives river users a scare.

Macleay River ... dead catfish, shellfish and bass. Photo: Jenny Evans

A PLUME of toxic pollution from an old antimony mine appears to have killed fish for dozens of kilometres along the Macleay River in northern NSW. The state government said there was no increased health risk because the contamination from the Hillgrove mine, east of Armidale, was diluted, but it has been ringing residents along the river as a precaution to tell them not to drink the water.

People living near the river and a tributary called Bakers Creek have found dead catfish, bass and shellfish, following recent heavy rain that caused a storage pond at the mine to overflow.  An investigation by the Environment Protection Authority began in August, and it estimates 900,000 litres of contaminated water entered the river when the storage pond overflowed.

''These overflows have been significantly diluted by rainfall runoff into the dam and from runoff into the creek from the catchment,'' the Environment Minister, Robyn Parker, said in a statement.
''The result of this rainfall is a significant dilution effect with no resultant change to background contaminant levels … water quality has not been impacted.''  But a study published by the CSIRO in 2009 described the waterways near the mothballed mine as ''highly contaminated'' and estimated about 7000 tonnes of waste had accumulated along the bed of the Macleay River.

Water tests have shown antimony levels at 250 times background levels, with high levels detected along the river to the coast at Urunga, where the mineral was once processed for export. 

Antimony, a silver-grey metal used in fire retardants, lead-acid batteries and electronic devices, is potentially fatal if ingested, and even small doses can cause headaches and dizziness. High levels of arsenic were also detected.

''This government is rapidly developing an abysmal record in environmental management,'' said the NSW Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham, who recently visited the area around the mine.  He wants a government investigation into health effects and potential loss of income for fishing and tourism operators along the length of the river.  Ms Parker said advice not to pump water from the river was ''standard advice and remains in force at all times''.

The company that owns the mine, Straits Resources, has been trying to minimise the pollution.  'They recently installed a much larger evaporator. In addition, they have been undertaking drainage work to direct stormwater away from the ponds in a bid to minimise inflows,'' Ms Parker said.

The Hillgrove mine may soon be reopened after it was purchased by Ancoa NL. Gold and antimony have been mined in the area since the 1880s.

Read more: Sydney Morning Herald