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Page added on October 20, 2013
Water radiation soars at Fukushima No. 1
Radiation levels in groundwater under Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant are soaring, Tepco said Friday after taking samples from an observation well.
Tepco said 400,000 becquerels per liter of beta ray-emitting substances such as strontium were detected in water sampled Thursday from the well located some 15 meters from a storage tank that leaked about 300 tons of highly radioactive water in August.
The level of becquerels, a record high for water in that well, was up 6,500-fold from the 61 becquerels found Wednesday.
Tepco was planning to pump groundwater up from different wells about 100 meters from the leaky tank for release into the Pacific before the water flows into the damaged reactor buildings and becomes heavily contaminated with radioactive materials.
But that plan appears in jeopardy because the sharp increase in the levels of radioactive materials in the observation well suggest the radioactive groundwater is spreading.
By law, water containing beta particle-emitting substances exceeding certain levels cannot be released into the sea. The upper limit is set at 30 becquerels per liter for strontium-90 and 60 becquerels for cesium-134.
Tepco also said water collected Thursday from a drainage ditch near the leaky tank contained 34,000 becquerels of beta particle-emitting substances per liter, compared with 2,300 becquerels the day before.
Water contaminated with radioactive materials flowed into the ditch when Typhoon Wipha hit the area this week, but then much of the water evaporated, leading to the surge in the density of beta particle-emitting materials there, Tepco officials explained.
It is believed some 400 tons of radioactive groundwater is flowing into the Pacific daily.
Officials said Thursday they will solicit proposals from both domestic and overseas nuclear experts and firms on how best to scrap the ruined reactors at Fukushima No. 1.
The International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning will publicly seek ideas as early as this month, an institute official said.
While the body is not putting the entire decommissioning process out to tender, the move will be welcomed by the international community, which has long called for Japan to make better use of available expertise around the globe.
The institute, formed by nuclear-related firms and government-backed bodies in August to dismantle the crippled reactors, will screen decommissioning proposals and take the results to the government, the official said.
“We will set up a website in both Japanese and English to notify interested parties at home and abroad of our calls for decommissioning ideas so that we can offer more useful and practical proposals to the government,” the official said.
11 Comments on "Water radiation soars at Fukushima No. 1"
action on Mon, 21st Oct 2013 12:16 am
I think the next earthquake will make the decisions for us. They need to build a wall around Japan, or at least Honshu, and leave it for dead, the Japanese are welcome to come to the US, as long as the blacks and Mexicans are forced to leave… Haha, a joke, and a bad one at that. I’m only racist against stupid people, of all colors.
FireJack on Mon, 21st Oct 2013 12:58 am
It’s not a good situation for sure but I wonder how much of these claims are based of an ignorance of how radiation works. I know journalists can get situations that are complicated very wrong and not care as long as they can sell the story.
BillT on Mon, 21st Oct 2013 2:08 am
Action, I understand that the Chinese have offered Japan one of their empty cities. Wouldn’t that be a slap in the face for the proud Japanese, to have to go begging to the country they tried to conquer? Karma is a bitch!
BillT on Mon, 21st Oct 2013 2:13 am
FireJack, how much is too much radiation? Exposure for a baby or fetus is quick death. For older children it is crippling or deadly. For adults it is cancers and a shorter life span.
How many Pacific fish do you have to eat to die? (BTW: eventually this will work it’s way into the Atlantic also.) How much contaminated air do you have to breathe? Your children? Grand kids?
And there are over 400+ more of these death factories in the world waiting for an accident.
GregT on Mon, 21st Oct 2013 6:06 am
What happens in Japan, doesn’t stay in Japan. It isn’t like there is a magical containment dome.
The same is true for every other nuclear facility worldwide. They will all eventually need to be ‘decomissioned’.
Too bad we have no idea how to actually do that.
No need for concern, I’m sure ‘they’ will think of something.
J-Gav on Mon, 21st Oct 2013 9:23 am
Looks like Japan is kinda stuck in a really crappy situation which is likely to get worse. You can’t dry-cask radioactive water …
diemos on Mon, 21st Oct 2013 2:28 pm
“The same is true for every other nuclear facility worldwide. They will all eventually need to be ‘decomissioned’.
Too bad we have no idea how to actually do that.”
Here’s some info on the process and the plants that have been decommissioned to date.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Nuclear-Fuel-Cycle/Nuclear-Wastes/Decommissioning-Nuclear-Facilities/#.UmU5QBbUnu0
drwater on Mon, 21st Oct 2013 4:00 pm
“Tepco was planning to pump groundwater up from different wells about 100 meters from the leaky tank for release into the Pacific before the water flows into the damaged reactor buildings and becomes heavily contaminated with radioactive materials. ”
Finally – This indicates that they have some basic understanding of hydrogeology and should be able to slow and/or stop the groundwater flow to the tank and reactor areas. They should be able to put in more upgradient wells and keep the groundwater under control.
GregT on Mon, 21st Oct 2013 7:54 pm
We haven’t figured out long term storage solutions for nuclear waste, period.
From the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission itself:
“At this time there are no facilities for permanent disposal of high-level radioactive waste. Since the only way radioactive wastes finally become harmless is through decay, which for some isotopes contained in high-level wastes can take hundreds of thousands of years, the wastes must be stored in a way that provides adequate protection for very long times.
The spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants must be handled and stored with the same care as separated high-level waste, since they contain the highly-radioactive fission products plus uranium and plutonium. Spent fuel is currently being stored in large water-cooled pools and dry storage casks at nuclear power plants. Some is also stored at facilities at West Valley, New York, Morris, Illinois, and Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. Existing high-level wastes from reprocessing are presently stored at West Valley, New York; Hanford, Washington; Idaho Falls, Idaho; and Savannah River, South Carolina.”
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/radwaste.html
Hanford is currently leaking, and although plans are in effect that ‘might’ solve the problem for several decades, there is no consensus as to whether or not this is even feasible. The earliest that it appears that any plans could be completed by, would be 2062.
ht tp://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=hanford-nuclear-cleanup-problems
Somehow, I find it very unlikely that we will have the energy, finances, or resources, to carry out a project such as this, 50 years from now.
J-Gav on Mon, 21st Oct 2013 8:52 pm
GregT – Though they do have the (technical) means to deal with spent fuel rods in the short term (the dry-casking I mentioned) they don’t really know what to do with those casks afterwards.
Which is why I agree with your conlusion, even if I don’t think it will take 50 years for the game to be exposed. Living in France, I’ve watched the industry dodge the core questions (no pun intended) for 3 decades. I’m talking about (real) costs: mining, transport, construction, maintenance,insurance and a place to put the stuff for a few centuries where it won’t make new-borns grow two heads in future generations … That’s why I’ve had that “Nuclear? No Thanks!” sticker on my apartment window for the same 3 decades.
As for decommissioning, we shouldn’t be naive about who’ll be stuck with the bill for that, if it ever gets underway …
SilentRunning on Tue, 22nd Oct 2013 12:39 am
BillT wrote:
>FireJack, how much is too much radiation? Exposure for a baby or fetus is quick death.
I hate to break it to you BillT, but I can guarantee you that every single fetus or baby that has ever lived has been exposed to radiation, because every living thing on earth is made of carbon, and some of that carbon is carbon-14, a radioactive isotope. And it doesn’t stop with carbon – there’s radioactive potassium in bananas and potatoes. Ever ate a french fry? It had some radioactivity in it – from carbon AND potassium.
And all of this was true 1000 years ago, before the first atomic experiments.
So there is SOME radiation level that is *safe* from humans to live in – because we always have.
>How many Pacific fish do you have to eat to die?
I’m willing to bet that you would die of morbid obesity before you died from radiation poisoning. Granted, I am not talking about fish from Fukushima harbor.