TEPCO Workers Remove Wrong Pipe Get Splashed With Radioactive Water

An anonymous reader writes "A day after TEPCO workers mistakenly turned off cooling pumps serving the spent pool at reactor #4 at the crippled nuclear plant comes a new accident — 6 workers apparently removed the wrong pipe from a primary filtration system and were doused with highly radioactive water. They were wearing protection yet such continuing mishaps and 'small mistakes' are becoming a pattern at the facility."

Comments

Again

[djupedal]

. . . the boys should not be trusted with nuclear anything. They know how to take notes and make lists, but when it comes to handling risk, they're clueless.

I once found a radioactive test sample in a dumpster when I worked for a medical device manuf. in Tokyo - there are many more stories to go along with that one. Like how we were told if there was a fire to first order a pizza, then tell the firemen to follow the delivery to the fire. A lumber yard caught on fire one night, and we watched as the sirens and flashing lights on the fire trucks zig zagged around the neighborhood - 45 minutes later, the fire was out and they still hadn't found it.

An outside multi-national agency must be brought in or these types of calamities will only continue with TEPCO.

Tohoku Earthquake Casualty Report

[gargleblast]

News from Fukushima? Excellent! Let me update my Tohoku Earthquake Casualty Report. Here it was yesterday:

Deaths..Injuries/Illness..Location/Cause
.....0.................2..Fukushima Daiichi NPP (Radiation exposure)
.....2................37..Fukushima Daiichi NPP (Earthquake / tsunami)
.15000..............6000..Rest of Japan

Here it is today:

Deaths..Injuries/Illness..Location/Cause
.....0.................2..Fukushima Daiichi NPP (Radiation exposure)
.....2................37..Fukushima Daiichi NPP (Earthquake / tsunami)
.15000..............6000..Rest of Japan

Re:Tohoku Earthquake Casualty Report

[Anonymous Coward]

In the long run, we are all dead.

The biggest casualties from Fukushima are the Chinese coal miners.
1.000-2.000 every year.

It is the substitution of nuclear energy by coal that costs lives. Not the other way around.
But those are the lives of Chinese peasants. So nobody cares.

Re:How does this happen?

[Osgeld]

please tell me which pipe is the correct on in this tiny fraction of a plumbing schematic for a power plant

http://carlwillis.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/p1020050.jpg
(that is 1 room of Chernobyl btw)

now bend it all up by being hit by a GOD DAMNED TSUNAMI

I am sure your C# is impressive, but seriously

Re:How does this happen?

[Osgeld]

did you not know the place was nearly destroyed?

http://resources2.news.com.au/images/2011/03/16/1226022/657762-japan-reactor.jpg

yea those tidy schematics are really helpful

Re:Radioactive is Now Only Toxic?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sitting in a room with an open bottle of bleach for a few hours, however might cause you issues, depending how large the bottle, and how small the room.
Sitting in a room and getting splashed with bleach unexpectedly probably *will* cause you issues more severe than what these folks will experience from this incident.

Living within 10 miles of a coal power plant means that *daily*, you're exposed to 10-100 times the radiation levels that the people around Fukishima have been exposed to. Coal-burning power plants release into the air more radioactive materials over a single decade than all nuclear power incidents in the history of the world, including Chernobyl and Fukishima. Bump that timeline up to 2 decades, and you can throw in every nuclear *weapon* incident in the world, including the two nukes we dropped on Japan.

But I guess we shouldn't let a little perspective interfere with your panic mongering.