Right Now, We Have An Emergency At Fukushima …

cumhachd_niuclach_cha_ghabh_idir_0The Wall Street Journal notes that radiation levels outside the plant are likely higher than inside the reactor.

How could it be more radioactive outside the nuclear reactors? The reactors have lost containment, and experts have no idea where the nuclear cores are.

And the problems which have been detected at ground-level are only the tip of the iceberg.  Japan Times points out:

Cesium levels in water under Fukushima No. 1 plant soar the deeper it gets, Tepco reveals

Tepco found 950 million becquerels of cesium and 520 million becquerels of beta ray-emitting radioactive substances, including strontium, in the water from 13 meters [~43 feet] underground.

Water from 1 meter down contained 340 million becquerels, and a sample from 7 meters down contained 350 million becquerels.

Cesium, a metallic element, is subject to gravity.

Via Reuters:

Highly radioactive water seeping into the ocean from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is creating an “emergency” that the operator is struggling to contain, an official from the country’s nuclear watchdog said on Monday.

This contaminated groundwater has breached an underground barrier, is rising toward the surface and is exceeding legal limits of radioactive discharge, Shinji Kinjo, head of a Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA) task force, told Reuters.

Countermeasures planned by Tokyo Electric Power Co are only a temporary solution, he said.

Tepco’s “sense of crisis is weak,” Kinjo said. “This is why you can’t just leave it up to Tepco alone” to grapple with the ongoing disaster.

“Right now, we have an emergency,” he said.

The British State is obsessed with nuclear power. In 2008 Gordon Brown argued for ‘1000 new nuclear plants’.

Earlier this year coalition ministers announced  £930bn would be invested globally in building reactors over the next 20 years, with £250bn being spent on decommissioning disused stations.

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  1. Tocasaid says:

    Love those stickers. I prefer my Gaelic to be Scottish though!
    http://www.indymediascotland.org/taxonomy/term/2760

    1. bellacaledonia says:

      so do I

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