Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Just In from #Fukushima I NPP: Worker Splashed with Contaminated Water as He Mistakenly Removed the Pipe Joint from RO Apparatus


Compared to the previous one which is bad enough, this got to be a below-kindergartener level idiocy, lack of competent workers, or lack of concentration due to overwork, or all of the above.

From TEPCO's alerts for the press (here and here) and Jiji Tsushin (10/9/2013):

  • A worker of an affiliate company mistakenly removed the joint of the pipe that goes into the Reverse Osmosis Apparatus (line-3) at 10:01AM on October 9, 2013;

  • Amount of water leaked: 60 meters x 12 meters x several centimeters;

  • The leak was stopped 50 minutes later;

  • The leak is contained inside the temporary building that houses Reverse Osmosis Apparatus;

  • The leaked water had already been treated by SARRY (cesium absorption) but not yet by Reverse Osmosis Apparatus (desalination), meaning it is extremely high in beta nuclides (37 million Bq/L or 37,000 Bq/cm3);

  • The worker may have been splashed with this contaminated water with extremely high beta.


7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi LaPrimavera!
Glad to hear you're recovering!
Just before I came here, Kyodo Breaking News headline was TEPCO confirmed 6 workers being affected by toxic water. Now its gone...
Poor people

Viola

Anonymous said...

DDSOS


Different day, same old sh1t

Apolline said...

Hi Ultraman, pleased to read you again and to translate your information.

Following Viola's comment, this is what Kyodo News says :

Highly radioactive water leaked from a desalination facility Wednesday at the severely damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant but did not reach the sea, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.

Workers accidentally disconnected a pipe to the facility and caused the leak that continued for over 50 minutes in the morning, it said, adding that six of the 11 workers were found to have come into contact with radioactive substances. They were likely covered with the tainted water, the Nuclear Regulation Authority said.

About 10 tons of water may have leaked, the utility said, noting the pipe contained some 37 million becquerels per liter of radioactive substances that emit beta rays such as strontium-90 in a reading in August, against the legal limit of 30 becquerels for strontium-90.

Anonymous said...

So it may not have been one worker who was mistaken (and mind you, not a TEPCO worker, as TEPCO pointed out, but an affiliate worker = TEPCO not to blame). Iinstead there were possibly 11 mistaken workers. Or should we say "misguided"? Doesn't anyone over there have a plan (literally) and know what is what? With countless levels of subcontractors, incidents like this one make it clear that blind (TEPCO) are leading the even more blind. Who would have thought that there is indeed a superlative to "blind" ...
*mscharisma*

Darth 3.11 said...

What in the world does it mean to say that "workers were covered with the tainted water"? First: covered means they took a shower or a bath in the stuff and were covered from head to toe. Is that so?

Second, this constant misuse of "tainted". That water is NOT tainted. A taint is a little bit, a dash, an off-flavor or off-odor, a scosh, a jot, a smidgen. This water is not that, it is *contaminated*. Why the fear of using the right word in the media? More government mind control? Seriously, it's irritating, and a dangerous misuse of words.

Meanwhile, a hearty お帰りなさい to Ultraman, in all his glory and appellations.

Anonymous said...

Kyodo News English is known for sloppy translation. Just ask anyone who worked for Japan Times. Not that Kyodo is alone in using the word "tainted". Lots of foreign media do that, probably by reporters with scant grasp of things nuclear.

Anonymous said...

Reportedly it takes only 10 tanks to total the same amount of strontium that was released during the accident.
Beppe

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