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Crack In Fukushima Structure May Be Leaking Radiation

Posted by timothy on from the don't-keep-that-all-bottled-up dept.

SillySnake writes with this excerpt from Reuters: "Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said it had found a crack in the pit at its No.2 reactor in Fukushima, generating readings 1,000 millisieverts of radiation per hour in the air inside the pit. 'With radiation levels rising in the seawater near the plant, we have been trying to confirm the reason why, and in that context, this could be one source,' said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy head of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), said on Saturday." Also of interest: Cryptome is featuring high-res photos of the reactor site, taken by UAV.

4 of 280 comments (clear)

  1. "May Be" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    For Technophiles at /. its always "maybe" when things are already happening? Are you living in the past or something?

  2. Re:The cost of nuclear by ultranova · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In my opinion this is the end of nuclear power plants.

    Yeah. We'll just replace them all with coal plants which kill a couple hundred thousand people a year rather than a few every few decades, as nuclear power does.

    --

    Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

  3. Re:The cost of nuclear by Synn · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't think it was a "perfect storm" of events that took out the plant, rather an inept/corrupt system of implementing nuclear power. I think we have the technical prowess to do nuke power safety, the problem is getting the current corporations and governments to do it properly.

    Our social and political structure lags behind our technical one.

  4. Re:"May be" "Possibly" "Calm down" "Sleep" by tsm_sf · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's clearly a problem, but it's not like the radiation travels through the water and up into the air.

    Look, I'm pro-nuke too but you're just making us all look bad at this point.

    1) This is a catastrophic failure of the first order, and claiming that it's not that bad because the reactor didn't go "BLOOEY!" makes people think that could be a possibility. It's not reassuring.

    2) Attempting to put a best-case spin on every aspect of the situation is entirely unhelpful. Nobody prepares for the best, they prepare (or should) for the worst. This isn't something people should be calm about, this is something people should be rational about. There's a difference.

    3) Your grade school science teacher is shedding a single tear.

    --
    Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.