Tag Archives: Radiation

Contaminated Fukushima Water Storage Tanks “Close To Capacity”, TEPCO Admits, by Tyler Durden

Posted on May 21, 2018 | 1 comment

Japan is nowhere close to “containing” the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

The Tokyo Electric Power Company is running out of container space to store water contaminated by tritium outside the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, and it’s also running out of room for building more tanks, according to Yomiuri Shimbum, a Japanese newspaper, which is creating an intractable problem for the utility, which has been tasked with supervising the cleanup of Fukushima.

The Japanese government has been desperately trying to accelerate the cleanup ahead of the upcoming 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo – and it’s a miracle it hasn’t run into this issue sooner. TEPCO is still struggling with how to dispose of the tritium-tainted water. Options discussed have included dumping it into the ocean, but that proposal has angered local fishing communities.

At some point, TEPCO and the government will need to make a difficult decision. Until then, ground water will continue to seep into the ruined reactor, where it becomes contaminated. Afterward, TEPCO can treat the contaminated water to purify it, but they can’t remove the tritium, which is why the supply of water contaminated with tritium continues to grow.

As one government official pointed out, Japan can’t simply store the radioactive water forever. As of now, the company should be able to store water until 2020.

Efforts have been made to increase storage capacity by constructing bigger tanks when the time comes for replacing the current ones. But a senior official of the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry said, “Operation of tanks is close to its capacity.”

TEPCO plans to secure 1.37 million tons of storage capacity by the end of 2020, but it has not yet decided on a plan for after 2021. Akira Ono, chief decommissioning officer of TEPCO, said, “It is impossible to continue to store [treated water] forever.”

To continue reading: Contaminated Fukushima Water Storage Tanks “Close To Capacity”, TEPCO Admits

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Hell Hole on Earth Discovered at Fukushima, by Dr. Mark Sircus

Posted on December 8, 2017 | 2 comments

If Dr. Mark Sircus is even half-right this is scary as hell. From Sircus at lewrockwell.com:

Most people think they have to die to go to hell but that is not true anymore. Today, in the mainstream press, they announced the existence of a hell hole in Japan at the destroyed nuclear power station at Fukushima. We have a hot spot on our planet that has never been imagined before and in the face of it human technology is helpless.

At the levels of radiation now being found a Fukushima, a robot would be able to operate for less than two hours before it was destroyed. And Japan’s National Institute of Radiological Sciences said medical professionals had never even thought about encountering this level of radiation in their work.

The accident is enormous in its medical implications. Through future years, too long to contemplate, we will witness an epidemic of cancer as people inhale the radioactive elements, eat radioactive vegetables, rice and meat, and drink radioactive milk and teas. Year by year, decade through relentless decade, the radiation will build up yet modern medicine does not seem concerned.

 

New readings at Fukushima have recorded the highest radiation levels seen since the triple core meltdown that occurred in 2011. Readings inside the containment vessel of reactor no. 2 are as high as 530 Sieverts per hour, a dosage that would be fatal dozens and dozens of times over if a human were to be exposed to it. The previous high was a still very fatal rate of 73 Sieverts per hour.

The blazing radiation reading was taken near the entrance to the space just below the pressure vessel, which contains the reactor core. The highest radiation levels ever measured at Chernobyl were 300 Sieverts per hour; an incomprehensibly high dose which can kill a man almost instantly.

The new record at Fukushima of 530 Sieverts per hour is 70% higher than that of Chernobyl. The 530 Sievert reading was recorded some distance from the melted fuel, so in reality it could be 10 times higher than recorded, said Hideyuki Ban, co-director of Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center.

To put this in perspective, radiation is usually measured in thousandths of a Sievert, called millisieverts. For example, most people receive around 2.4 millisieverts per year from background radiation, or only 0.0002739726 per hour.

According to the Kyodo news agency, the institute estimates that exposure to one Sievert of radiation could lead to infertility, loss of hair and cataracts. One Sievert is enough to cause radiation sickness and nausea; 5 Sieverts would kill half those exposed to it within a month, and a single dose of 10 Sieverts would prove fatal within weeks.

To continue reading: Hell Hole on Earth Discovered at Fukushima

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