Fukushima update - 02/13/2014

Green, contaminated water fills bottom of Unit 4

Removed: Report, photos of destroyed containment vessel interior deleted from website — Reporters: We strongly feel that effort from whole nation is needed to face future at Fukushima

ENENews,

13 February, 2014

Yomiuri Shimbun, Feb. 14, 2014: Water contaminated with radioactive substances continues to flow into the basement level [...] due chiefly to the absence of any decisive countermeasures, when we visited on Wednesday. [...] the contaminated water still continues flowing into the No. 4 reactor from the adjacent No. 3 reactor via pipes and other routes. [...] As we walked around above the doughnut-shaped suppression chamber, we shone our flashlights underfoot, to find green, turbid water about 2 to 3 meters below. [...] As the decommissioning of damaged reactors is said to take as long as 40 years to complete, there is still a long way to go. We strongly feel that effort, to be made by the whole nation, is needed.

From Tuesday: Gov’t says radiation levels too high in Unit 4 — Workers forced to cover floor with lead — Experts: ‘Significant loss of leaktightness’ possible in Fukushima fuel pools

Yesterday’s report and photos published by Yomiuri about the ruined interior of Unit 4′s containment vessel can no longer be accessed. The reporters briefly mentioned the subject today: “We also entered a reactor containment vessel for the first time. Pipes and walls there were heavily damaged. Debris scattered after the hydrogen explosions three years ago was also left untouched on most floors of the building. Bare pipes and reinforcing bars hung down from the walls, showing the extent of the devastation inside the building.”

No explanation is given for why these are ‘no longer available’.

See yesterday’s deleted report here

Reporters reveal “blast ruined inside of containment vessel” at Fukushima Unit 4 — Walls ‘destroyed’ — Explosion was ‘believed’ to have been outside reactor

ENENews,

12 February, 2014

Yomiuri Shimbun, Feb. 13, 2014 at 6:11a JST: Blast ruined the inside of containment vessel at Fukushima plant [...] Reporters from The Yomiuri Shimbun visited the crippled plant Wednesday [...] On the top floor of the plant’s No. 4 reactor building, a crane was moving to remove spent nuclear fuel [...] On the lower floors, debris and wreckage were scattered. A hydrogen explosion, which is believed to have taken place outside the reactor, destroyed a door attached to the containment vessel as well as walls and pipes inside the vessel.

Photo captions for article ‘Blast ruined the inside of containment vessel at Fukushima plant’:

• Yomiuri Shimbun reporters look at the inside of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant’s No. 4 reactor building on Wednesday.

• Contaminated water on the basement of the No. 4 reactor building

Yomiuri Shimbun, Feb. 13, 2014 at 4:00a JST: Wreckage is seen inside the containment vessel at the No. 4 reactor of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, on Wednesday.

Japanese government plan to dump radiated strontium-90-rich groundwater into Pacific

Nation of Change,

9 February, 2014

All trust has been shattered. It isn’t as if the Pacific Ocean needs more radioactive mire, but the Japanese government is trying to dump their poisoned ground water into an ocean that is already quickly dying.  A senior scientist at MIT, Ken Buesseler, and co-author of Japan’s Continuing Nuclear Nightmare says, “ultimately you can’t keep putting contaminated water in tanks. You are going to have to decontaminate and release some of that water. There’s a finite amount of real estate . . .” but Tepco isn’t decontaminating that water. They simply don’t have the resources to do it. High strontium-90 levels found in groundwater are simply going to be redirected to the Pacific if the government gets approval.

My question is whose approval? Who ultimately is in charge of saying, “sure you can put so much poison in the ocean, it will never be able to support life again, and while you’re at it, go ahead and start watching that toxic, radioactive sludge travel up the food chain, until it reaches human beings, and kills them off faster than the plague.” The Nationwide Fisheries Foundation has been called upon to support the dumping, ‘as long as the water’s contamination level is far below the legal limit,’ one that has been recently changed by governments around the world.

While the measure is an attempt to keep the toxic water from piling up in tanks, it certainly isn’t a wise decision to dump it into the ocean, especially since Tepco has been imprudent in reporting the true levels of contamination up to this point. 

Officials are requesting a more stringent level of – how shall we put this – appropriate contamination compared to legal limits before releasing the water into the ocean, but most of us are well appraised, there are no longer any safe levels of radiation in the Pacific – sea lions, whales, deep sea squid, lantern fish, sardines, sea stars, and even plankton are showing up with radiation poisoning and dying on our shores. Enough already. Japan, and the rest of the world – wake up! You are killing life on earth as we know it. Or maybe that was the plan all along.