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Fukushima Leak Traced To Overflow Tank Built On a Slope
AmiMoJo writes "The ongoing leak of radioactive wastewater at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has been traced to an overflow tank that was built on a slope. Because one side of the tank is lower than the other, water slops over the side when it is nearly full. TEPCO estimates that 430 litres of wastewater seeped outside the barrier around the tank and say some of this water may have flowed into the sea, about 200 meters away. They detected 200,000 becquerels per liter of beta ray-emitting radioactive substances in water pooled inside the barrier around the tank. The safety limit is 30 becquerels per liter. Officials say that a miscommunication with contractors led to the blunder."
They knew the tank was not level, and were careful not to overfill it. The problem is that this was not communicated to the contractors who then did overfill it.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It was 430 liters of wastewater with a comparatively low radiation level(0.2kBq, for nuclear medicine image studies you're counting mega-Bq and you're injecting it, for radionuclide therapy you're up in high and wild GBq numbers). So yes indeed no worries, really.
Regarding the safety limit of 30 becquerel: that's two banana equivalent doses, meaning that a banana shake can exceed the safety limit. And 6 million bananas being equivalent to the total leaked value.
I'm not sure you bothered to actually understand the situation before you made any of your posts. We're dealing with a facility that was heavily damaged years ago and you're trying to imply they have no surveyors? As TFA notes, they have been keeping the level lower due to this being a known issue. A rainstorm made it overflow.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
I question if gazillions of gallons of oil gushing into the ocean all at once is more or less bad than a little plutonium.
I go with more bad.
Plutonium is pretty fucking toxic.
If you breathe it in under ideal conditions. Most sea life doesn't have lungs, the plutonium would all be chemically bounded up as salts or other compounds, the whole mess would be greatly diluted, and there wasn't much in the way of plutonium anyway - they're far more worried about radioactive isotopes of cesium or strontium.