Posted on 02/19/2014 10:35:59 PM PST by nickcarraway
A large amount of radioactive water has leaked from a holding tank at Japan's troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, its operator said Thursday.
The leak of an estimated 100 metric tons of highly contaminated water was discovered late Wednesday, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) said in a statement.
The tainted water flowed over a barrier around the tank and is being absorbed into the ground, TEPCO said. The plant has shut off the inflow of water into the tank and the leaking has stopped, it added.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Just lovely. I hope this doesn’t distract from the methodical but imperative removal of those fuel rods, This ant-crawl pace is unnerving.
The Long Island housewives called it back in the 70s
When they prevented LILCO from building Shoreham
The schtuff is just not safe
What a disaster, and I don’t mean the original one.
- Water pumped into a tank that was already full and 100 tones of highly radiocative water spills out.
- They don’t think any of the water made it to the Pacific Ocean but are not sure.
- One of the two thermometers they have to monitor the temperatures of the fuel was accidentally shorted out by workers.
- And they have to keep pouring water on the fuel rods to keep them cool, then find a place for the water.
- Booming business for storage tanks of highly radioactive water in Japan right now. New models said to have a sight glass so workers can tell if it is full or not.
I could not agree more.
This is interesting.
IAEA International Peer Review Mission on Mid-and-Long-Term Roadmap Towards Decommissioning of TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Units 1-4, 12 February 2014 (I shortened the title, which is even longer)
http://iaea.org/newscenter/focus/fukushima/final_report120214.pdf
That's less than the size of an Olympic-class swimming pool, and must be considered in the reported amount of water reported to have leaked from the site since March 11, 2011.
This is not to make this reported leak seem unimportant, only to note that reported leaks measured in metric tons is misleading, and not in a way favorable to "TEPCO."
Water weighs a lot.
And, Of course, water is never "radioactive." It can hold radioactive matter in suspension, but water does not ionize.
A month or so ago calculations estimated that the total amount of water holding radioactive matter in suspension water leaked from Fukishima from March 11, 2011 through January 4, 2014) was estimated at 2/3ths the capacity of a Boeing 747 "large cargo freighter" aircraft.
Of course, press reports upon which such estimations were calculated sis not specify which "ton" they were referencing; Metric (2205 lbs) or English (2,000 lbs.), etc.
Again, I'm not downplaying the ass-hattery, cover-ups, real deaths of personnel, long-term threats to everyone in the Home Islands or any other real danger. But these reports are meaningless without referencing measurements of water using normal liquid terminology, nor without reports that also estimate the degree of radioactive contamination in the water.
In short, just saying "tons" of "radioactive (or contaminated) water" is essentially meaningless and useless.
The horrors never end with that disaster.
I did find this interesting...
"The decommissioning of TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi NPS is a challenging task that requires the allocation of significant resources, as well as the development and use of innovative technologies..."
They call reactors blowing up a "decommissioning"?
And is the translation of "a challenge that requires the development and use of innovative technologies" that they have no idea at the moment how to deal with it?
No, despite the feelings you may have, justified or not, ‘decommissioning’ means... well, decommissioning. It means the process of removing the ‘schtuff’ and then dismantling the plants.
Blowing up, well, that’s blowing up.
I don’t think this what you wanted to say. Water naturally ionizes which makes it the great “Universal Solvent”.
I think you wanted to say something to the effect that water does not decay or have isotopes.
Actually, a small proportion of the water contains tritium, rather than hydrogen, or a radioactive isotope of oxygen in place of the stable oxygen. All substances have some level of radioactivity.
The question is, how much of the fuel rod material actually dissolved in the water? My guess is little to none. Just being near a radioemitter does not make a material radioactive.
I find these reports on the Daiichi plant heavy on sensationalism, light on facts. While this situation has been a boon to the anti-nuke fearmongers, it is not so great for attempts to continue to provide clean, non-bird killing energy.
Yes, exactly.
I think you've said exactly what I was stumbling, mumbling around and only trying to say. And so much better.
Thank you for the kind words.
From the article:
The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant says 100 tons of water containing record high levels of radioactive substances overflowed from a storage tank.
Also:
... the leaked water contained... ...230-million becquerels per liter of beta-ray emitting substances, consisting mainly of strontium 90.
The level is about 7.6 million times the government's permissible standard for the nuclide level of water allowed to be released into the sea.
...they also detected 9,300 becquerels per liter of cesium 137 in the water.
Is "100 metric tons" of contaminated water "less favorable" to Tepco than "26,407 gallons" of contaminated water?
Checking Tepco's website, it turns out that "100 tons" is straight from their press release:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/2014/1234394_5892.html
I am a long time supporter of nuclear power and still am. Nuclear power and materials can be safe: The US Navy has handled a LOT of nuclear materials safely in many situations for a long time. However, it is very hard for me to fathom Tepco's incompetence. Surely they must have some decent engineers, but this whole thing continues to read like The Three Stooges hooked up with Laurel & Hardy and King Arthur's knights (from Monty Python) to run a nuclear power plant. Irregardless of how dangerous this leak was, or was not, just this incident alone would convince me Tepco should not run a bathhouse, much less a nuclear facility. But I guess they are all Japan has, at the moment.
(It's not just that something went wrong, it's how many things went wrong, and how many things were not done, or not done properly, for this incident to occur.)
It seems to me that if Japan does not stick with nuclear power, they will either end up poor, or fighting China for oil and gas deposits. But if organizations like Tepco are the best they can do (to provide nuclear power), they might be better off fighting the Chinese. :-(
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