Fukushima Daiichi Water Leak Raised To Level 3 Severity

AmiMoJo writes "Japan's nuclear regulators have raised the level of severity of the radioactive water leak from a tank at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. It is now a level-3 serious incident. The revision from level 1 is based on estimates of the volume of radioactive substances leaked. The International Atomic Energy Agency supports the revision. They say the tank leak can be assessed separately from the Fukushima Daiichi crisis as a level 3 incident. Japanese experienced a level-3 nuclear event in 1997 with the fire and explosions at a fuel reprocessing plant in Tokai Village, Ibaraki Prefecture. 37 workers there were exposed to the leaked radioactive substances."

Comments

The fate of the 1997 workers

[vivaoporto]

Japanese experienced a level-3 nuclear event in 1997 with the fire and explosions at a fuel reprocessing plant in Tokai Village, Ibaraki Prefecture. 37 workers there were exposed to the leaked radioactive substances.

What was the fate of the 1997 workers exposed like that? That would be a good way to assess what kind of consequences we could expect from the current incident,

Re:The fate of the 1997 workers

[Joe_Dragon]

frank grimes

Re:The fate of the 1997 workers

[quenda]

they were carrying uranium in a bucket and it went super-critical in 1999. That was a level 4. 2 people died of multiple organ failure.

Starting with the brain failure that preceded the criticality. One doesn't simply throw another bucket of 18% enriched uranium into the tank.

Re:The spent fuel pool disaster clock is ticking

[quenda]

Bollocks. TFA states the pools contain "85 times the cesium released" at Chernobyl, which tells us little by itself.
How much cesium might be released into the atmosphere by a fire? An how much of the exposure at Chernobyl was caused by cesium? I thought most of the exposure was from iodine and other shorter-lived isotopes.
      To says an "85 times bigger disaster" is shameful dishonest scaremongering.