Bright with a stiff chilly wind this afternoon on California’s north coast — another day in the retired life.
The ongoing science-reality, horror-saga of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant continues, now approaching the fourth anniversary of its infamous earthquake/tsunami meltdown.
And the situation still sucks, bad.
(Illustration found here).
Via Newsweek this afternoon:
The operator of the crippled nuclear power plant announced Sunday that sensors in its drainage system had detected a leak of contaminated water 50 to 70 times more radioactive than radioactivity levels already seen on its campus — which the AFP points out were already quite high.
The drainage system discharges water into a nearby bay, which flows into the Pacific Ocean.
The operating company, Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), said it shut down a gutter to prevent the contaminated water from reaching the Pacific on Sunday morning.
The radiation levels dropped off steadily throughout the day, but were still 10 to 20 times higher than usual later in the day.
Yet more bad news surfaced just days later: On Tuesday, Tepco announced it had detected elevated levels of radiation in rainwater pooling on the roof of a plant building back in May, but had failed to disclose the finding until now, according to NBC News.
The radioactive water had likely leaked into the sea through a gutter when it rained, Tepco announced.
Tepco has been “aware since last spring” that the rainwater pooling in one corner of the roof contained 23,000 becquerels per liter of radioactive material cesium 137, which is more than 10 times more radioactive than samples of water taken from other parts of the roof, Reuters reports.
Of course, all this radioactive shit has been bubbling into the Pacific Ocean, and has really pissed off local fishermen. Reportedly today, in an effort to sooth the seas, Tsunemasa Niitsuma, a TEPCO executive officer, met with the local fishermen’s association, but it’s all about ‘fuck you!’
Per NBC News:
This was not enough for Masakazu Yabuki, the head of the fishermen’s cooperative in Iwaki City.
In comments carried by Nippon TV he said the damage was already done.
“In order to settle this crisis as quickly as possible, I realized I had to compromise and to do that I had to calm our fishermen and that’s because I trusted TEPCO,” he said.
“But with this one act, they betrayed me.”
WTF? This guy has a really forgiving heart after so many lies from those Tepco guys, with incompetent screw-ups, subsequent cover-ups and idiot-managing the disaster this past four years.
And most-chilling of the news accounts of this latest incident, from Japan News yesterday, a reflection of the real danger:
The TEPCO official repeatedly stated, “We can’t figure out the reason [for the contaminated-water discharge],” his comment shedding light on the current situation in which the issue of contaminated water has yet to be solved even four years after the accident.
They can’t determine why? Now, that’s getting shitty/creepy-scary.
In direct path of all this Fukushima shit is the US western shoreline, even here on the north coast, and some lightweight radioactivity reported off shore, but yet no major incidents.
Harnessing nuclear power is one of mankind’s dumbest mistakes, especially before really figuring out how to get rid of the long-long-time mega-dangerous waste. And a deadly pile growing — just after the Fukushima disaster, HuffPost in March 2011: ‘The U.S. has 71,862 tons of the waste, according to state-by-state numbers obtained by The Associated Press. But the nation has no place to permanently store the material, which stays dangerous for tens of thousands of years.’
Fuk that shit!