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New Radioactive Water Leak At Fukushima: 300 Tons and Growing

Posted by Soulskill on from the two-leak-stories-in-a-row dept.

AmiMoJo tips this news from the BBC: "Radioactive water has leaked from a storage tank into the ground at Japan's Fukushima plant, operator TEPCO says. Officials described the leak as a level-one incident — the lowest level — on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES), which measures nuclear events. This is the first time that Japan has declared such an event since the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. A puddle of the contaminated water was emitting 100 millisieverts an hour of radiation, equivalent to five year's maximum exposure for a site worker. In addition up to 300 tonnes a day of contaminated water is leaking from reactors buildings into the sea." There was a significant leak back in April as well.

1 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. It's been upgraded to a Level 3 Event. by fullback · · Score: 5, Informative

    Each level is considered 10 times more severe than the level below, just like earthquake intensity scales.

    I live less than 100 miles south the Fukushima plant.
    On behalf of the people around me, I'd like to tell the Godzilla and Ninja Turtles-type of posters to go fuck yourselves. This isn't a fucking Internet meme to some of us.

    Some of us who weren't killed or hurt in the earthquake or tsunami still have financial problems from the economic downturn in our businesses. We're not all in a position to just be able to pack up and move. We don't all live in trailers like some of you Godzilla-spouting fuckers.

    Some of us have had to dig deeply into our savings.

    To be honest, I'm more worried now than I was a year ago. We're back to trying to contain events instead of making any progress toward cleaning up and decontaminating.

    I think a bigger problem is this:
    How are they going to continue to find people willing to work at the plant? They quit after a while.
    Would you work in a sealed decontamination suit and breathing gear outside in a heat index about 140F for about the same money the night shift kid-manager at Burger King makes? Just how smart and competent can someone like that be?

    That's scary.

    And the problem is not the engineers, it's the reckless, cost-cutting zealot-assholes from the accounting departments who become the presidents of utilities instead of engineers.