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The tsunami and meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant happened way back in March, 2011, going on three years now. Old news, right? Meltdowns happen.

Actually, not such old news. Another 100 tons of radioactive water leaked last Wednesday, just one of an ongoing series of mini-disasters occurring regularly at the damaged nuclear plant which is currently being held together by duct tape, baling wire and chewing gum — or techniques similarly temporary and unreliable.

It’s not the first spill, there have been many, but this water is more contaminated than usual.

[T]he water was about 3.8 million times as contaminated with strontium 90 as the maximum allowed under Japan’s safety standards for drinking water. It also showed levels much more radioactive than a worrisome groundwater reading that Tepco announced earlier this month. That reading — five million becquerels of strontium 90 per liter — which was detected at a location closer to the ocean than the latest spill, prompted criticism of Tepco because the company waited five months to report it publicly.

The reason for the spills is that groundwater keeps seeping into the reactor buildings, and the only choices available to Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) are to let it run into the Pacific or store it in huge above-ground water tanks.

So far, Tepco said, about 340,000 tons of water have accumulated in the tanks, enough to fill more than 135 Olympic-size swimming pools. A ton of water is equivalent to about 240 gallons.

Fox News reported that “plant workers attached a garbage bag to contain the leakage.” The “Fox News reported” attribution makes me a tad skeptical, but hey, it’s not The Onion, and it’s not the worst Fukushima fix I’ve read about.

I posted regularly about Fukushima when I was at Blog for Arizona. In 2013 alone, I wrote about cooling systems being knocked out because a rat got into the switchboard (the wire nets installed to keep the rats away caused another power outage), TEPCO finally admitting that radioactive water was leaking into the sea on a regular basis (they’re planning to create an underground ice wall to contain the water — seriously), 300 tons of water leaking from a storage tank (if you stand a foot away from the leaking water for an hour, you’ll receive 5 times the maximum yearly radiation dose for nuclear workers), and one of the last leaks of 2013 dousing six workers with radioactive water (because the workers took out the wrong pipe — Oops!)

The local connection to all this is, gubernatorial hopeful “Atomic Al” Melvin (more often known as Cap’n Al) wants to put nuclear plants all over bone-dry Arizona, even though those things need lots of water — more than lots when there’s an accident. Al and other nuke promoters are oblivious to the dangers, so the rest of us need to keep in mind, Fukushima is an ongoing disaster still looking for a solution almost three years later, and the land in that area will never be the same.

This article appears in Feb 20-26, 2014.

11 replies on “Fukushima: The Nuclear Disaster That Keeps On Giving”

  2. I believe that the Human race, homo-sapiens Rex, has finally achieved plague status on the face of the Earth !
    It’s the ‘petri dish’ syndrome : eventually the cells outgrow the growth medium.
    It’s an awful thing to say but people that are having children today, in this brave new 21st century, are blissfully unaware of the ‘future’ that awaits their progeny.

  4. This is an extinction event! At the present time seismographs are detecting micro critical explosions beneath Fukushima. These are small areas where critical mass is achieved and a nuclear explosion occurs which disperses enough material to achieve a sub critical mass. These are nuclear explosions and have all of the radioactive byproducts of an atomic bomb. These explosions and continued release of radiation are going to continue until a) the meltdowns burn through the earths crust and the material is absorbed by the earths core. But by this time the whole surface of the earth will be highly radioactive. (radiation accumulates) b) a huge international effort is made to halt them. Those nuclear fires can be put out with borax! Why is this not being done as it was in Chernobyl?

  5. We cannot depend on Japan to do the right thing. They have been lying to us all along. They tell us the huge strontium 90 readings are in error because their meter is broken. What a farce!!! Is this not important enough to get a working meter!!!

  6. All the water that boils off of Fukushima is radioactive. laced with Strontium 90. Strontium 90 is really bad because chemically it is very similar to calcium and our bodies can absorb it! That steam that is rising off of Fukushima will eventually condense and fall as rain or snow elsewhere. Coating all the vegetation! Getting into everybody’s food chain.

    One atomic bomb uses something in the neighborhood of 20 lbs of uranium when it explodes. How many atomic bombs worth of uranium are burning in Fukushima???

    There is the equivalent of a nuclear war going on over there and our governments are all in denial as are the Japanese!

  8. Yes It will get into the food chain when it rains! People need to stock up on the radiation detox mineral Clinoptilolite Zeolite to remove the radiation from their bodies! For more info do a search for the key word Zeolite! This is very important!

  9. Remember, The University of Arizona had a working nuclear reactor hear in Tucson, Arizona not least than 5 years ago.

  10. Math question for Safier. What happens if you stand 20 feet from the wall? Hint it’s proportional to the square of the distance.
    2nd question. How many people globally suffer health or economic problems from nuclear generation vs coal and gas. Include global warming effects in your calculations.

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