Major new leak at Japan's nuclear plant - Kyodo(pipe broke open at reactor #4)

Reuters ^ | 02/02/12

[TigerLikesRooster]

Major new leak at Japan's nuclear plant - Kyodo

01 Feb 2012 22:38

Source: reuters // Reuters

Feb 2 (Reuters) - More than 8 tonnes of water have leaked from Japan's stricken nuclear power plant after a frozen pipe burst inside a reactor buiding, but none of the water is thought to have escaped the complex, Kyodo news agency said on Thursday.

Kyodo, quoting the Fukushima plant's operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), said the water had leaked from the No.4 reactor when a pipe "dropped off" but that the liquid had all been contained inside the reactor building.

The plant, on the coast north of Tokyo, was wrecked by a huge earthquake and tsunami in March last year, triggering the evacuation of around 80,000 people in the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years. The major leak follows the discovery and plugging of smaller leaks at the same reactor last weekend.

Kyodo quoted Tepco officials as saying the latest leak had been found late on Tuesday night and was stopped by closing a valve. The report did not make completely clear if the leaked water was radioactive but implied it, noting that water inside the No.4 reactor was being used to cool spent fuel rods.

[TigerLikesRooster]

P!

[bgill]

The major leak follows the discovery and plugging of smaller leaks at the same reactor last weekend

After all this time and they're just now finding leaks? If that's the case, you can bet there are dozens more they haven't found and are continuing to leak to the outside of the building.

[steve86]

Sure, that’s not surprising... corrosion, freezing/heating, mechanical stresses...new leaks.

[freebird5850]

Wouldn’t be surprised if this is not the whole story. Tepco has a track record with this practice.

[GOPJ]

Wouldn’t be surprised if this is not the whole story. Tepco has a track record...

My first thought too...

[steve86]

Both can be true. New leaks and unreported old leaks.

Did someone get ticked at me in #5? lol

[lefty-lie-spy]

Concrete and other barriers are your friends when it comes to radioactive contamination. This doesn’t bother me much. Several hundreds of thousands of tons of contaminated water have already been dumped into the sea over the last year. Sure, its a mess, but it could be worse. If radioactive water is pooling in the basement or on the ground of the plant, its not much more of a problem than it initially was.

[justa-hairyape]

There was a recent story that leaked out from a Fukushima worker who tweeted that Reactor #4 had a brand new core sitting inside of it when the big quake hit. Reportedly they had just put the new core in, but for some reason had stopped the process. Then the quake hit. The initial response to this report was that it could not be true. Then, surprisingly, TEPCO reports a leak in #4 where water is leaking from the reactor and it is radioactive because the water in the reactor is connected to the water in the #4 SFP. So the radioactivity they see is coming from the SFP, not the loaded reactor.

Very strange coincidence, no doubt.