Thursday, May 9, 2013

Unprecedented Contamination of the Ocean


Today is Convocation, which constitutes the graduation ceremony at my university campus.

I will not be able to post today as I'll be on campus all day.

I've decided to simply update my reports of ocean contamination. Thanks to Enenews for highlighting this article here  

TEPCO to dump groundwater to ease crisis at Fukushima nuclear plant May 08, 2013 http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201305080062

[Excerpted] about 400 tons of groundwater flow into the reactor buildings on a daily basis and mixes with the radioactive water. According to calculations, 300 tons of groundwater would still flow into the reactor buildings every day even after TEPCO starts pumping up the water through the wells....

...Currently, surface tanks at the Fukushima No. 1 plant hold about 280,000 tons of radioactive water. 

...An additional 100,000 tons are believed to be flooding the basements of the No. 1 to No. 4 reactor buildings as well as the turbine buildings.An estimated 120 tons of radioactive water leaked into the ground from the faulty underground tanks.... [end]

Majia here:  As I've reported previously, the water leaking at the Daiichi is highly contaminated:

Kimura, S. (2013, April 6) 120 tons of contaminated water leaks at Fukushima nuclear plant. The Asahi Shimbun, http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201304060038

Majia here: Tepco has in the past fessed up to contaminated water 'spills.' However, this water was hot as Tepco estimated its rad level at "710 billion becquerels of radioactivity." No measurement of water of the volume of water containing 710 million becquerels was given in the article.

Tepco states that this water measuring 710 million becquerels (per liter?) was already filtered. The unfiltered water is twice as radioactive:

"The water had passed through a filtration system before leaking, and its radioactivity level was about half that of water that has yet to be filtered, according to TEPCO." [end]

Fukushima Diary tells us that Tepco has admitted the water "may" contain high amounts of plutonium: 

Posted by Mochizuki on April 28th, 2013 The leaking reservoirs may contain 1,300 Bq/m3 of Pu-238 and 110 Bq/m3 of Cm-244 [Excerpted] By April. 2013, Tepco has admitted 3 of 7 reservoirs are leaking the highly contaminated water into the environment at least. From Tepco’s report of 4/26/2013, 1,300 Bq/m3 of Pu-238 and 110 Bq/m3 of Cm-244 may be in the leaking reservoirs. 

Majia here: The ocean contamination is unprecedented and there is no end in site. 

The water at the site is going to be dumped into the ocean because that alternative is seen as "safer" than leaving it on land, probably because the water is contaminating the aquifer and surface water.

Dumping radiation into the ocean is not new for Japan. They learned it from the US. Perhaps why the US has been so quiet about the contaminated water headed toward the US Pacific coast (and Canadian and Mexican coasts as well):

Tuesday, September 27, 2011 ASAHI: "U.S. secretly asked Japan to help dump nuclear reactors"http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201109260363.html

[excerpted] "The United States secretly sought Japan's support in 1972 to enable it to dump decommissioned nuclear reactors into the world's oceans under the London Convention, an international treaty being drawn up at the time.

Countries working on the wording of the pact wanted to specifically prohibit the dumping of radioactive waste at sea.

But Washington wanted to incorporate an exceptional clause in the case of decommissioned nuclear reactors....

"...It was apparent that the United States constructed nuclear reactors without having decided on disposal methods, forcing it to consider dumping them at sea after they were decommissioned..."

Majia here: The ocean was imperiled before Fukushima, but we now face an unprecedented situation.

According to a November 16 report by Tepco titled, ‘Integrity Inspection of Dry Storage Casks and Spent Fuel at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station,’[i] as of March 2010 the Daini site held 1,060 tons of spent uranium fuel. The total spent uranium fuel inventory at Daiichi in March 2010 was reported as 1,760 tons. The 2010 report asserts that approximately 700 spent fuel assemblies are generated every year.[ii] The report specifies that Daiichi’s 3,450 assemblies are stored in each of the six reactor’s spent fuel pools. The common spent fuel pool contains 6291 assemblies. The amount of MOX fuel stored at the plant has not been reported.  

Damaged nuclear fuel is highly contaminating. How damaged is that fuel? Mr. Yastel Yamada, a retired engineer and founder of the volunteer Fukushima Skilled Veterans Corps, has suggested that the fuel from the reactors may possibly be in powder form.[ii] Any powdered corium would no doubt enter the atmosphere in the form of the continuous steam emissions from the plant, and be swept into the ocean and ground water. The volume of water needed to cool the highly damaged fuel simply overwhelms efforts at capture, decontamination, and storage.

Damaged fuel is ending up in the ocean and atmosphere. How much is enough to wipe out the human race?

Professor Hiroaki Koide, Nuclear Reactor Specialist and Assistant Professor at Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute said at a 2012 conference that three of the reactors at the plant, reactors 1, 2, and 3, all had core meltdowns and the current locations of the melted fuel rods are unknown. Prof. Koide concluded that humanity as a whole has never experienced this level of radiation contamination and he stated ‘I have no idea what will happen but we will be fighting this radiation on the order of tens, hundreds of years.’ [iii] 

Majia here: I previously commented at some length on how contaminated oceans will lead to contaminated people. We are witnessing a slow-motion mass extinction event and nothing is being done to stop it.

Majia's Blog: Compromised Oceans Mean Compromised People

majiasblog.blogspot.com/.../compromised-oceans-mean-compromised.ht...
Sep 19, 2012 – Majia here: I'm a water person - I love the ocean, lakes, streams, etc. So, it seems obvious to me how radiation contamination of the world's



REFERENCES
 1 It is worth noting that although this report was produced on 10/26/2010, the file properties indicate the document was modified on 3/13/2011: Integrity Inspection of Dry Storage Casks and Spent Fuels at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (16 November 2010), http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/accidents/6-1_powerpoint.pdf.

2.‘I Don’t Know What Would Happen: Fuel from Fukushima Reactors May Be Powder’ (28 September 2012), Enenews, http://enenews.com/dont-happen-future-fuel-fukushima-reactors-be-powder-work-almost-impossible-video/comment-page-1#comment-291586, date accessed 28 September 2012 (Uploaded by: OccupyUkiah 30 July 2012).

3.Archive Footage of the NYC Press Conference May 4th 2012.’ Cinema Forum Fukushima, http://cinemaforumfukushima.org/2012/05/06/archive-footage-of-the-nyc-press-conference-may-4th-2012/, date accessed 18 May 2012.

PREVIOUS POSTS


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