Fukushima nuclear power plant operator to dump 11.500 tons of radioactive water into the Pacific

While in Fukushila there is now a leak in reactor no. 2, the government, according to its secretary general Yukio Edano, authorized these dumpings there, as an “inevitable emergency measure”. However, he noted, "even if the contamination will be diluted in the ocean, the longer it lasts, the more radioactive particles will be released and the greater the impact on the ocean will be. We strongly urge TEPCO to take action. immediately to deal with it".

It is reassuring to note moreover... that according to The Point : Three of the plant's six reactors, whose fuel threatened to melt, are now in a stable state, he added, however.

I let you discover the details in the article below from the Nouvel Observateur,

Update 26.02.2016 : Fukushima : 5 years later, Tepco admits to having lied about the seriousness of the state of the reactors...

TOKYO (AP) — Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), the operator of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, announced on Monday the discharge of 11.500 tons of radioactive water accumulated in the facilities damaged by the March 11 tsunami. Technicians have also started using white dye to try to locate a leak of radioactive water flowing into the ocean.

Since the magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami that damaged the power supply system of the plant located 250 km northeast of Tokyo, technicians, firefighters and soldiers have poured thousands of tons of water to cool the bars reactor fuel and prevent them from completely melting.

But this radioactive water flooded the buildings, galleries and service tunnels of the plant. "We need to get rid of the accumulated water and decontaminate the site in order to return to our main task, restoring the cooling capacities as quickly as possible," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the Nuclear Safety Agency, on Monday. Japan (NISA).

To this end, TEPCO initially discharged 10.000 tons of water, the rates of which are 500 times higher than the legal limits. According to a TEPCO spokesperson, this discharge will free up space to store a large quantity of even more radioactive water. In addition, 1.500 tons of water were to be released from a pit located under the buildings of reactors 5 and 6.

The government, according to its secretary general Yukio Edano, authorized these spills, "inevitable emergency measure". However, he noted, "even if the contamination will be diluted in the ocean, the longer it lasts, the more radioactive particles will be released and the greater the impact on the ocean will be. We strongly urge TEPCO to take action. immediately to deal with it".

The Fukushima plant, in fact, is cracked and radioactive water flows directly into the Pacific, whose shore is only a few tens of meters away. A 20 cm breach was discovered this weekend in the concrete of a maintenance pit. It was filled with concrete but the technicians couldn't get it to dry.

They injected a mixture of sawdust, newspaper and a special polymer into a pipe connecting the pit to the rest of the system on Sunday. But this attempt to plug it also failed, and the engineers now want to precisely locate the origin of the leak. "There could be other passages through which the water could infiltrate", confirms Hidehiko Nishiyama. Several tens of kilos of a white dye were therefore dumped in an attempt to visualize the path taken by the water, which contains levels of radioactive iodine 10.000 times higher than the legal limit.

At the same time, TEPCO has announced that it has ordered external containment barriers intended to limit the flow of water. The operator, criticized in Japan for its management of the crisis, admitted on Sunday that it would take "several months" to stabilize the situation at Fukushima Dai-ichi (Fukushima 1), a complex comprising six reactors. And several years will probably be necessary to decontaminate the site and secure it: the reactors cooled with corrosive seawater can no longer be operated.

According to the latest still provisional report from the police, the magnitude 9 earthquake and the tsunami killed 12.175 people, while 15.489 people remain missing. Tens of thousands of people remain homeless in the northeast of the country. PA

source: The New Obs

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