More Bad News From Fukushima

PuceBaboon writes "Both Reuters and the BBC are carrying the story of an increase in radiation levels reported by Tepco for contaminated water leaking from storage tanks on site. When this leak was discovered almost two weeks ago, Tepco reported that the radiation level was 100-millisieverts. It now transpires that 100-millisieverts was the highest reading that the measuring equipment in use was capable of displaying. The latest readings (with upgraded equipment) are registering 1800-millisieverts which, according to both news sources, could prove fatal to anyone exposed to it for four hours. Coincidentally (and somewhat ironically), today is earthquake disaster prevention day in Japan, with safety drills taking place nationwide."

Comments

Re:Where were the professionals.

[Urkki]

What the actual fuck. How could such a stupid mistake be made?

Well, situation was probably carefully evaluated, and everything considered, it was decided that this is a mistake worth making. Just speculating to provide an example, there may have been something else happening at the same time, some evaluation or hearing or whatever, and there it was important that the reading was not too high, so the short term mistake at the expense of looking like amateurs was deemed a good trade.

This was NOT mistake.

[boorack]

It was deliberate, somewhat shortsighted lie. This is how every fuckin big fat corporation behaves these days. It is worse than communism. Just compare Fukushima fiasco to old commies handling Chernobyl. They did everything they could to NOT let this crap hit watertable. They've put liquid nitrogen injecting installation under the reactor to make sure it won't burn through the basement and won't contaminate ground waters. They've put 600 thousands people to work to clean up their mess (every man for one minute or so). Compare this to the crap, lies, corruption and cost cuttings TEPCO is doing on their site. Our corporate fascist system is failing us badly and if we won't put them all in check soon, consequences of their misdeeds, greed and corruption will hit us hard.

Re:Where were the professionals.

[gweihir]

That is a lie. Well, the part about Beta is true, so yes, they can. But there is no feasible protection against Gamma rays for people. The only thing that is there (lead aprons) reduce it at best down to 50%, but they are so heavy that you move at half the speed or slower, so no protection at all. At Cernobyl, the experts decided that running was by far the best protection available, and have a look at how few of them are still alive.

Re:This error was done more than once

[fritsd]

Here's a scary thought: maybe most of their trained personnel has already received the maximum lifetime dose and has been given their retirement already..

Re:Oblig.

[BigDukeSix]

These are really big doses we are talking about, in the range of what external-beam radiotherapy uses to destroy tumors. When stating that four hours' dosage at this level is likely to be lethal, this means "likely to be lethal by acute radiation sickness with death occurring in days." In reality, much shorter exposures are likely to be lethal from induced cancers (leukemia and thyroid cancers being common). It will just take longer for those people to die. I suspect that most of the workers who have been on site to this point have likely had their fates sealed.

Re:Where were the professionals.

[AmiMoJo]

The Japanese government already practically owns TEPCO because it had to nationalize it to cover the clean-up cost. They just don't have any administrative control or use their shareholder rights.

So basically TEPCO is in charge but not paying the bulk of the bill. The situation is not unique to Japan, every country with nuclear power would be in the same situation if something like that happened because getting commercial insurance to cover the hundreds of billions of dollars it costs is impossible.