TEPCO says water level in tank at Fukushima nuclear dropped due to quake - The Mainichi Daily News

TEPCO says water level in tank at Fukushima nuclear dropped due to quake - The Mainichi Daily News: "Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said on Jan. 2 that the level of water in a tank for the No. 4 reactor at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant dropped "abnormally" after an earthquake measuring up to 4 on the Japanese scale of 7 struck the Kanto and Tohoku regions on New Year's Day."

Fukushima Nuclear Plant Released Far More Radiation than Government Said: Scientific American

Fukushima Nuclear Plant Released Far More Radiation than Government Said: Scientific American: "The new study challenges those numbers. On the basis of its reconstructions, the team claims that the accident released around 1.7 X 1019 Bq of xenon-133, greater than the estimated total radioactive release of 1.4 X 1019  Bq from Chernobyl. The fact that three reactors exploded in the Fukushima accident accounts for the huge xenon tally, says De Geer."

IAEA on Fukushima fact-finding mission

TEPCO said that 36 tons of radioactive water has leaked from a waste disposal building.

Some update from TEPCO on Fukushima

Increased flow of water to unit 1 to 10 m3/h. It is thought that the core of unit 1 has sustained 55 % of damage to the fuel.

Soil samples are showing Americium 241 and Curium 243 and 244.

Spent fuel pools of both unit 2 and 4 are being injected with water.

Radioactive water still leaking into the ocean.

Smoke on Tuesday April 12 is coming out from underneath reactor 2 and 3.

New nuclear plume trajectory published April8 by the IRSN

 

Voir la simulation à l'échelle mondiale

Radiological monitoring and consequences -IAEA

Radiological Monitoring and Consequences

View more presentations from IAEA

- Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Finland, France, Greece, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, Poland, Romania, Russian Federation, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Ukraine have reported radioactivity in the air, all levels are very low.

Plutonium in the Soil of the Nuclear power plant -Le Monde

Plutonium 238, 239 and 240 was found in the soil outside the stricken nuclear power plant, and its presence in the soil does confirm that the reactor core and fuels have been damaged. The astonishing thing however is the lack of international coordination to resolve this accident, all that the UN is doing is organizing a summit in June to review nuclear safety.

Plutonium 238 has a half life of 88 years, plutonium 239 of 24,100 years,and plutonium 240 of 6,560 years.

In experiments conducted during WWII plutonium was found to accumulate in bones as does stontium-90 and was found to be more dangerous than radium.

Highly radioactive water leaked into the environment -Reuters

Water in Unit 2 and 3 is highly radioactive and TEPCO found some radioactive water into the piping tunnels at 1,000 millisieverts enough to cause hemorrhaging with a single dose.

Also, Greenpeace detected high radiation beyond the exclusion zone and called for expanding the evacuation zone another 12 miles.

Also, TEPCO has asked the French to help with the situation which is not close to being resolved.

"This is far beyond what one nation can handle -- it needs to be bumped up to the U.N. Security Council," said Najmedin Meshkati, of the University of Southern California. "In my humble opinion, this is more important than the Libya no-fly zone." Finally, someone with reason. For the whole article see Reuters.

The world community must handle this accident so that the reactors can be cooled and then entombed quickly because the radiation releases will affect the rest of the world like Chernobyl did and maybe even more so and thus it is time to pull all of our resources together and immediately. 

Fukishima-Radiation readings and update from the IAEA

There are 4 reactors having major issues, and today it is unit 1 and 4 which are spewing white smoke. The spewed radioactive particles of Cs-137,Cs-134 and I-131(and a soup of others possibly including Strontium-90) have been and are carried by winds and deposited in at least 17 of the 48 Japan's prefectures; from March 18-25 in seven of the 17 prefectures showed I-131 at about 100 becquerel/meter squared and Cs-137 was about 500 becquerel/square meter. The highest value was found in Yamagata which had 7500 becquerel per square meter of I-131 and 1200 becquerel/square meter of Cs-137.  In Shinjyuku district of Tokyo, the daily deposition of I-131 on March 27 was 200 becquerel per square meter and 12 becquerel per square meter of Cs-137.

Samples have been taken just beyond the evacuation zone 30 km to 41 km at this location 0.9 to 17 microsievert per hour at the same location beta gamma contamination ranged from.003 to 3.1 Megabecquerel from 3,000 to 3,000,000 becquerel  per square meter.

The worldwide average background dose for a human being is about 2.4 millisievert (mSv) per year. Wikipedia


What is currently happening on site; one fresh water is being injected in some of the reactors pools and vessels; workers are trying to remove the highly contaminated water, resulting from the spraying for 12 days of sea water on the reactors. Where is that water going to go? The Ocean?

The spraying with fresh water should dilute the huge salt deposits which are now a major problem due to interfering with the cooling and creating problems of corrosion.

The officials the nuclear community understand that this accident and its complete termination will take several weeks.

I think that this accident must be raised to above the 5 it was assigned, in fact the scale top number of 7 is really where it is at, and the evacuation zone should be expanded to at least 50 miles.

IRSN latest up-dates on Fukushima

"Les réacteurs n°1, 2 et 3 restent dans un état particulièrement critique en l’absence de source de refroidissement pérenne. L’exploitant TEPCO procède maintenant à des injections d’eau douce dans les réacteurs n°1, 2 et 3 ; néanmoins, compte tenu de la présence massive de sel dans les 

réacteurs, les risques d’altération du refroidissement du combustible demeurent. Les rejets atmosphériques et liquides se poursuivent.  " I

I translate:

"Units 1,2 and 3 remain in a critical state since they don't have a constant source of  water. TEPCO the plants owner is now injecting fresh water in the core vessels of 1,2 and 3; but because of the presence of a huge amount of salt there are problem keeping the reactors cool. Fukushima is still spewing radiation particles into the atmosphere and the Pacific Ocean.

See the whole report it is in French.