Monday, July 8, 2013

#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: Radioactive Cesium in Groundwater Sample from Observation Hole No.1-2 Jumps 90-fold in 3 Days


From the sample taken on July 5 from the hole (No.1-2), 99 Bq/liter of cesium-134 and 210 Bq/liter of cesium-137 were detected, along with 900,000 Bq/liter all beta and 380,000 Bq/liter tritium.

Now, TEPCO announced the measurement of the sample taken on July 8, and the results are:

cesium-134: 9,000 Bq/liter
cesium-0137: 18,000 Bq/liter
all beta: 890,000 Bq/liter

tritium: (being measured)

According to Kyodo News, the observation hole No.1-2 is close to the hole where extremely highly contaminated water was found gushing from a crack in the wall into the ocean in early April in 2011. Back then, the radiation level above the water was so high that the survey meter went overscale; it was at least 1,000 millisieverts/hour, or 1 sievert/hour radiation at at least 1 meter off the surface of the water. I don't think TEPCO ever bothered to measure radiation levels outside the Containment Vessels if they were over 1 sievert/hour.

(From TEPCO's Photos and Videos 4/2/2011)


That extremely contaminated water was supposedly coming directly from Reactor 2, and my blogpost from 4/5/2011 says:

Water at the crack, outside the pit: 5.2 million becquerels/cubic centimeter of iodine-131


I couldn't find the numbers for radioactive cesium.

Ah, bad old times. (Image is from Yomiuri Shinbun, 4/5/2011.)

After bath salts, sawdust, shredded newspapers, baby diaper polymer (sorry, links to images are gone), concrete mix, that water finally stopped when special polymer was injected into the base rock beneath the culvert (duct) that was carrying the contaminated water.

At that time, I wrote, "OK. So the water is going elsewhere."

TEPCO says they plan to inject similar polymer along the ocean side of the turbine buildings to stop the contaminated water from reaching the ocean.

The water may go elsewhere.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a handy way to get rid of this contaminated water. Tanks are getting full and they do not leak fast enough to keep up with the flow of contaminated water.
If you have to empty tanks by pumping less contaminated water into the ocean, there will be lots 'comments' on that. But this leak, that is much easier, no one to blame, except the leak of course. But leaks don't speak, so that is easy and cheap.
So up to the next cheap fix. What will that be? Ahhh, the tanks, they are so flimsy that they will fall apart when the duct tape doesn't hold it anymore. Fault of the duct tape off course.
Another cheap way to get rid of the contaminated water, as it was unforseeable for the Tepco boys that the duct tape did not hold a 50 years or so.

And who is going to win the next elections. Right, the lovely LDP boys, who said with the previous election, they are ( maybe ) against nuclear, and after the elections, they changed their mind right away.

In any other normal country, a party like LDP ( who is the actual problem of the nationwide corruption ) would be send home. But not in civilised Japan...

As long as the Japanese do not want to understand that this problem has no easy answers and cheap solutions, there is no hope that there will be any improvement. And Japanese who i talk to, do not go to voted, as it makes no difference, they all say.

Just hopeless.

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

It's beyond bad, isn't it? I don't know what to do other than keeping my mouth shut when I talk to people whose information source is TV and Yomiuri Shinbun. To them, boys at LDP is doing one helluva job, economy is booming (i.e. stock market is rising), people with some money are spending, family restaurants are always full, what a wonderful world all of a sudden, all thanks to Mr. Abe! But those lazy young people who don't work even if there are lots of temporary jobs, like trimming fruit trees in Tohoku.

Uggghhh.

Unknown said...

Waste storage leak? I hope. I suspect China Syndrome pooling of meltdown into the water table itself as well. Good thing I can prove no such thing or I'd really be nervous all the way over here in San Francisco.

Anonymous said...

@ Laprimavera: it's unbelievable 'beyond bad'. A Japanese friend of us, who is suffering from a kind of cancer which will kill her within 10 years for sure, with no possible cure on the horizon, she doesn't vote. It doesn't matter, according to her..
What about your 10 year old daugther? I asked. What about all those other people who will suffer from this way of dealing with Fukushima?
She never thought about it and she asked me, where shall we go eat?

And this is the typical attitude of about at least 80% of the population.
The problem is not (only)Tepco, as strange as it may sound, it's the Japanese themselves, as their only concern seems to be: Which restaurant shall we go today?

And the Japanese are experts in 'reasoning in the reverse way', as your Tohoku remarks makes it once more very clear.

I can not get my head around, how you can justify for your self to let people suffer, so you don't have to think about someting you do not want to be confrontated with. It's for me the ultimate selfishness and Japan seems to be full of that...

I really gave up on the Japanese... they are completely lost in both ways, I'm afraid...

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