Fukushima Radiation Levels High, But Leak Plugged

jmcvetta wrote in with a story about Fukushima radiation levels so high that monitoring devices have been rendered useless. Levels outside the buildings exceed 100 millisieverts in some places. But the good news is that the leak is patched using 1500 liters of sodium silicate.

Comments

Obligatory xkcd radiation chart

[elrous0]

Helpful radiation chart for those of us who don't have a clue whether 100 millisieverts is a tiny dose or enough to create a Godzilla monster.

In short, it's definitely into the "You might want to step-up your planned schedule on those cancer screenings" territory.

Leak to ocean stopped. Leak from reactor, not.

[Animats]

The leak that was stopped was from a drain pit to the ocean. The reactor itself is still leaking highly radioactive water. They're running out of places to put it.and are frantically building tanks and ponds.

Re:"Leak Plugged" ? Yea right.

[TopSpin]

There is an estimated 50,000 tons of water still on site that will need to be disposed of one way or the other. About 500 tons are pumped into reactor pressure vessels for cooling every day. Some recent information on this is reported here by NHK: Workers face challenge of water storage

To put 50,000 tons of water in perspective, a super tanker will carry about 172,000,000 gallons of oil. 50,000 tons of water is ~12,000,000 gallons. One super tanker could carry all the water on site plus and also receive all new water pumped into the reactors for the next 1332 days. No, I don't need the plausibility of this explained to me; this is an attempt to provide some scale to the problem.