A third accident with radioactive water from storage tanks has exposed at least six workers to radioactivity according to Tokyo Electric Power Company.
The plant has been suffering a series of accidents since the 2011 tsunami that caused meltdowns in three reactors. The plant has been pumping in large amounts of water to keep the reactors cool since the accident and have been storing them in unreliable storage tanks.
TEPCO reported a worker removed a pipe connected to a water treatment system and six workers in the location of the tank were sprayed with contaminated water. The company said they have not yet been able to determine the level of radiation each worker was exposed to.
On Monday, the plant experienced a minor emergency when a worker accidentally switched off power to pumps that sent water into the reactors to cool them.
The operator of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant admitted Thursday that a second tank containing highly contaminated water overflowed sending radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean.
The leak was the second in less than two months.
Japan’s government is closely monitoring Tokyo Electric Power Company amid worldwide concerns the company cannot handle the massive cleanup associated with the meltdowns of the Fukushima reactors.
TEPCO said that the leaked water contained 200,000 becquerels per liter of strontium 90. The legal limit for emission of strontium 90 is 30 becquerels per liter. The tank reportedly overflowed after a worker miscalculated how much the tank could hold and because the tank is tilted because of an uneven location.
TEPCO says the radiation is mostly confined to the harbor around the plant and should not impact other countries because the ocean would dilute the radiation. The company has also found elevated levels of radiation around other tanks suggestions a design flaw within the tanks.
A 5.3 magnitude earthquake hit early Friday morning at the nuclear facility which suffered catastrophic meltdowns during the 2011 tsunami in Japan.
Officials with Tokyo Electric Power Company said they observed no abnormality in radiation after the quake according to the Japanese news agency Kyodo News. Continue reading →
A day after the Japanese government announced plans to fund an “ice wall” to keep radioactive material from the damaged Fukushima nuclear reactor facility from reaching the ocean, officials admitted that radiation levels at the site of a leak is 20% higher than previously mentioned.
The current level around the most recent leak is 2200 millisieverts, enough to give a lethal dose of radiation to a human without hours if they had no protective materials. Continue reading →
After various worldwide news sources discovered the leaking of contaminated water from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant was worse than previously known, the Japanese government has pledged to create an “ice wall” that will stop damage to the environment.
The “wall” would be a series of pipes placed in the ground that will contain coolant materials aimed at freezing the Earth around the facility. Government scientists believe this will keep radioactive water from seeping into the groundwater or flowing into the ocean. Continue reading →
