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THE OPERATOR OF Japan’s stricken Fukushima nuclear plant says it has found highly radioactive water dripping from a pipe connecting two coolant tanks, and had patched it up with tape.
The discovery came hours after Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said late Saturday it had found new radiation hotspots at four sites around coolant tanks, with one reading at 1,800 millisieverts per hour – a dose that would kill a human left exposed to it in four hours.
But the radiation was largely beta ray with weak penetration force, which workers can easily block by wearing protection jackets, a TEPCO spokesman said.
TEPCO has long struggled to deal with the huge amounts of water used to cool reactors that went into meltdown after being struck by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
The government has promised to get more involved in the plant’s clean-up after TEPCO’s efforts came in for fierce criticism.
The pipe at one of the four sites was found to be dripping one drop about every 90 seconds. It was repaired using special material and plastic tape.
Water with a radioactivity of 230 millisieverts per hour was found below it, TEPCO said.
It said workers also found two other hotspots, where they measured 70 and 220 millisieverts per hour near tanks. The fourth hotspot measured 1,800.
“We have to suspect that the high radiation levels were detected due to the toxic water oozing out of the flange connections,” the spokesman said, adding the company has not yet come to a conclusion.
Went unnoticed
Last week the plant operator admitted that 300 tonnes of toxic water had leaked from one large tank – one of around 1,000 on the site – before anyone had noticed.
The spill sparked fears the toxic water may have seeped into the ocean. It was categorised as a Level 3 event, the most serious category since the meltdown itself.
In response to growing domestic and international criticism of TEPCO’s handling of the crisis, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday promised the world his government would play a greater role in stopping leaks of highly radioactive water.
The accident in Fukushima cannot be left entirely to Tokyo Electric Power. There is a need for the government to play a role with a sense of urgency, including taking measures to deal with the waste water.
Abe’s pledge came as the world’s nuclear watchdog urged Japan to explain more clearly what was happening at Fukushima and avoid sending “confusing messages” about the disaster.
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I blame the lads in sector 7-G.
Probably Lenny.
Aahh it’s a secret!
Sshhhhhut up!
Sticky tape? ….
I know duck tape can fix most things, but leaky radiation filled pipes is a new achievement! I hope they used some wd-40 too.
This could be a more long term problem than Chernobyl
TEPCO have said it will take anywhere between 40 and 100 years to properly contain the leaks and yet plans going ahead in island next door to us to build more nuclear plants and a kind of softening up process going on here that we should follow suit this madness must stop.
It’s one of the older model reactors, yet it took an earthquake AND a tsunami to damage it enough to leak.
Technology has become much safer since it was originally built – so long as they build the new plant using new tech, I’m not worried.
@Stephen Would you be ok if they built one next door to you
Bill the only reason I wouldn’t like it beside me is because of the eye sore, I would feel perfectly sage.
Fukushima took more of a hammering than than anyone anticipated, a magnitude 9 earthquake and a massive tsunami, 1000s died across tho country.
Fukushima was part of the disaster but wasn’t the disaster itself.
Tepco has consistently underestimated the scale of this problem, they’ve lied to the public and they seem unwilling to accept help from anyone. The IAEA should demand access to Fukushima and compile their own report. The Japanese authorities have lost all credibility on this and things are getting worse.
Fukushima is every bit as bad as chernobyl. Both were melt-down. Only chernobyl had the explosion to go with it.
Melt down?
Yep melt-down. Reactor core cooling system fails. Nuclear fuel rods overheat, and “melt-down” and become an un-contained unmanaged unmanageable mush of molten uranium emitting vast uncontrolled quantities of radiation and heat, contaminating everything it comes close to, including the groundwater system which freely roams around the local, and not so local environment thus distributing the contamination over a wide area.
No nukes, No nukes,
Will all that radioactivity create a mutant lizard like Godzilla and may reek havoc in New York in a few years time??
Yeah, and the Pope is a Catholic.
‘Save The Whales’
Leaking into or out of?
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