Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Saturday that 250 tons of water tainted with about 20 terabecquerels of radioactive substances leaked into the Pacific Ocean from a pit near the seawater intake for the No. 3 reactor at the troubled Fukushima No. 1 plant earlier this month.
While the figure is far lower than the 4,700 terabecquerels released near the No. 2 reactor in April, it is still about 100 times the permissible level, according to Tepco.
At the time, the water was registering 9.8 terabecquerels of cesium-137, 9.3 terabecquerels of cesium-134 and 0.85 terabecquerels of iodine-131.
The leak is believed to have started at around 2 a.m. May 10 and was stopped at 7 p.m. May 11, Tepco said. The amount of water that escaped in that 41-hour period totaled 250 tons, it said.
The leakage of tainted water raised the concentration of radioactive substances in the port of the power plant but did not significantly change the level beyond it, the utility said.
The leak was reported to the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.
diemos on Mon, 23rd May 2011 11:26 am
4,700,000,000,000,000 Bequerels released into the ocean? That’s a big number.
Of course, once it disperses into the 1,300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 liters of water that are in the ocean that will be 0.0000036 Bequerels per liter.
Aren’t big numbers interesting?
Landrew on Mon, 23rd May 2011 11:39 am
Not interesting if it’s in the fish your eating.
diemos on Mon, 23rd May 2011 11:54 am
seawater contains 416 mg/L of Potassium.
0.012% of potassium is naturally occurring radioactive potassium-40.
so 41.6e-6 gm/L of K-40 in seawater
Activity of K-40 is 818 pC/gm so 34.0e-3 pC/L
0.037 Bq/pC
so 1.26e-3 Bq/L or 0.00126 Bq/L of naturally occurring K-40
So the ocean was already 500 times more contaminated by naturally occurring K-40 than what was released by fukushima.
Aren’t numbers interesting?
jugzy on Mon, 23rd May 2011 3:45 pm
You know what else is interesting? The difference between fission products and naturally occurring k 40. Potassium decays via beta decay and some gamma. Fission product nano particles however get in your body from eating fish from our new tera becquerel ocean and spray neighboring dna strands with massive high energy alpha particles for 30 years until it turns into cancer. Cool huh?
diemos on Mon, 23rd May 2011 10:32 pm
“Potassium decays via beta decay and some gamma.”
So does I-131 and Cs-137 which is the bulk of what’s being emitted.
Edpeak on Tue, 24th May 2011 10:15 am
“Aren’t numbers interesting?”
Not very interesting when they are thrown out without any citation, any reputable reference that confirms the numbers
Econ Democracy on Tue, 24th May 2011 11:23 am
“So does I-131 and Cs-137 which is the bulk of what’s being emitted”
You are ducking the point he was making, which was NOT whether those which were emitted, also decay via veta and some gamma, but rather that
“our new tera becquerel ocean and spray neighboring dna strands with massive high energy alpha particles for 30 years ”
and the this could be carcinonenic. You didn’t try to counter that. I don’t have the info myself on this particular point, but the fact you ducked responding to the assertion he made and did not even try to coutner it, doesn’t help your credibility when your next post says(?) that the above quote by him is not true..