Fukushima Spiking All of a Sudden (2 Viewers)

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New radioactive water leak at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant - CNN.com
The leak of an estimated 100 metric tons of highly contaminated water was discovered late Wednesday, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) said in a statement.
The tainted water flowed over a barrier around the tank and is being absorbed into the ground, TEPCO said. The plant has shut off the inflow of water into the tank and the leaking has stopped, it added.
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Yeah, this isn't over. Won't be for a long long long long time... I'm not buying that nuke power is safe anymore.

Deadly 9.4 sieverts detected outside Fukushima reactor 2 containment vessel; checks stop | The Japan Times

Exposure to such a dosage for some 45 minutes would result in death. Tepco said it expects decontamination work at the site to take at least one month.

Although details surrounding the high radiation levels remain scarce, the highest contamination was detected near the floor of the building, according to the company.

Tepco had planned to begin checking the inside of the containment vessel in August by using a remote-controlled robot, but high radiation levels have stalled the examination.

Extremely high radiation levels and the inability to grasp the details about melted nuclear fuel make it impossible for the utility to chart the course of its planned decommissioning of the reactors at the plant.
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Radiation Levels Inside Fukushima's Damaged Reactors Reach All Time High | Smart News | Smithsonian

But exploring further may prove difficult. Examining the electronic noise caused by radiation in the images taken near the pressure vessel, Tepco analysts determined that the area is contaminated by 530 sieverts of radiation per hour. The previous high in the reactor was 73 sieverts recorded in 2012, reports The Japan Times. Luckily, there is no indication that the radiation is leaking outside the reactor.

One sievert—the international measurement of radiation exposure—is enough to cause radiation sickness, infertility and cataracts. Exposure to 10 sieverts will lead to person’s death within weeks, reports McCurry. Tepco says that their estimate has a margin of error of 30 percent, but even then the radiation levels are off the charts.
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Seems to be getting worse not better right now.
 
Is a Damaged Fukushima Nuclear Reactor About to Fall Into the Ocean? : snopes.com

On 3 February 2017, the disreputable web site YourNewsWire posted a story with the alarming but false claim that one of the reactors damaged in the 2011 disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was on the verge of falling into the ocean:

Scientists at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan have declared a state of emergency as one of the reactors is on the verge of falling into the ocean.

Lethal levels of radiation have been detected around the site which scientists say stems from a hole caused by melted nuclear fuel.

No credible news reports have stated that a Fukushima reactor is about to fall into the ocean, nor has any Japanese government agency announced a state of emergency. YourNewsWire's exaggerated "news" seems to have been derived from media reports in early February 2017 about high levels of radiation found inside the containment vessel for reactor No. 2 at Fukushima power plant No. 1. The Japan Times reported of the situation that:

The radiation level in the containment vessel of reactor 2 at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 power plant has reached a maximum of 530 sieverts per hour, the highest since the triple core meltdown in March 2011, Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc. said.

Tepco said that the blazing radiation reading was taken near the entrance to the space just below the pressure vessel, which contains the reactor core.

The high figure indicates that some of the melted fuel that escaped the pressure vessel is nearby.

At 530 sieverts, a person could die from even brief exposure, highlighting the difficulties ahead as the government and Tepco grope their way toward dismantling all three reactors crippled by the March 2011 disaster.

In a statement they sent to us, Tepco confirmed the high radiation levels inside the reactor but noted no changes to radiation levels outside the unit:

We estimated radiation levels at certain points inside the Unit 2 Primary Containment Vessel (one of it was as high as 530 **/h), based on the digital images obtained from the previous investigations (held on January 26 and 30) with a guiding pipe and camera. The level of radiation discovered was higher than expected (the previous highest measurement was 73 **/h), but we need further investigations to find out why the radiation got this high at this specific location.

There has been no change to radiation levels outside the PCV. Extra precautions have been taken to prevent leaks of radiation during the investigation. The penetration pipe through the PCV wall is tightly shielded, and the work area is pressurized so that air only moves from the outside into the PCV and not the reverse. We routinely disclose on our website sampling results of radiation inside the reactor buildings and of the surrounding areas.

What that means, engineer and San Diego State business professor Dr. Murray Jennex told us, is that clean-up just became much more difficult than expected. Tepco announced on their official Facebook page that while conducting a survey of the containment unit, they "found that some deposits had adhered to the structures directly below the Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV) and that a part of the grating had sunken in at the center of the pedestal (the concrete base supporting the RPV)."

A likely explanation for the extremely high radiation reading, Jennex said, is that "crud," a term used to mean radioactive particles, had settled into that depression:

The structures are holding but inside where the fuel melted, it went all over the place. There was a lot of water pumped into this plant so stuff really got moved around, and I think what you have happening is a crud trap — a low point in pipe or tank where it gathers together. All that material went that direction, and that is a very high reading.

Jennex, an expert on nuclear containment who has commented in-depth on the disaster, said exposure to radiation levels that high would be almost instantly fatal and surmised that Tepco would ultimately be forced to build a concrete sarcophagus around the unit like the one that encapsulates reactor no. 4 at Chernobyl. He added that they "may have to let nature take its course for a while."

The Guardian, which has a reporter posted in Tokyo, described the recent radiation levels as the highest recorded since the massive 2011 earthquake and tsunami that caused the initial meltdown six years ago, but the newspaper noted that Tepco says none of that radiation has leaked outside the containment unit. However, plans to send a robot in to survey the vessel seem to have been scuttled, as radiation at that level would destroy even a robot in less than two hours:

A remote-controlled robot that Tepco intends to send into the No 2 reactor’s containment vessel is designed to withstand exposure to a total of 1,000 sieverts, meaning it would survive for less than two hours before malfunctioning.

The firm said radiation was not leaking outside the reactor, adding that the robot would still prove useful since it would move from one spot to the other and encounter radiation of varying levels.

Tepco and its network of partner companies at Fukushima Daiichi have yet to identify the location and condition of melted fuel in the three most seriously damaged reactors. Removing it safely represents a challenge unprecedented in the history of nuclear power.
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superchuck500 said:
So weird.

Just last week I read this:

Fukushima radiation levels far lower than previously thought, study finds
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I think this is 2 different scenarios. In yours they are looking at the levels in people around the plant. In the other, they are looking at the levels right at the active site.

Radiation levels remaining from the 2011 disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant appear to be a small fraction of what previous measurements suggested, according to a recently published study that followed levels in tens of thousands of people living near the site of the accident.

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So why the discrepancy? The government's estimates, based on aircraft surveys, assumed people were spending about eight hours a day outdoors without shielding, when in reality they were likely spending much of the day inside buildings that shielded them from exposure.
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What do you do with 1.2 million tons of radio active water since you are running out of storage and are creating 170 tons per day?

Dump it in the ocean...

www.forbes.com

Japan To Release Radioactive Fukushima Water Into Ocean

Japan's new Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is to dump over 1.2 million tons of radioactive Fukushima water into the ocean as a way to reduce the costs of the $200 billion nuclear plant clean up. There has already been international outrage at the plans, and local fishermen look set to protest.
www.forbes.com www.forbes.com
 
Forbes article is pretty light on details - how radioactive is the water they propose dumping ? How does it compare with natural background levels ?
 
Interesting. According to this fellow (a nuclear scientist), this is actually the safe thing to do.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesc...s-radioactive-fukushima-water-into-the-ocean/
The funny thing is that putting this water in the ocean is actually the best way to handle it. And that’s because it’s contaminated mainly with tritium, the least radioactive, and least harmful, of all radioactive elements. All of the other radioactive elements have been removed from the water by chemical treatment down to low levels and the amount of other elements in the water is relatively small and wouldn’t pose a hazard diluted to this degree.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danebe...market-fundamentals-in-latest-energy-outlook/
The Japanese government awaits a report from an expert panel before making a final decision, and quickly pointed out that Harada’s opinion was his alone and did not indicate a policy decision. TEPCO will abide by whatever the government decides.

Critics, like Greenpeace, weighed in with the usual every-atom-is-dangerous and this water should be stored and treated forever. They don’t seem to understand the radiation and chemistry of tritium.

But few do.

Those of us who do understand have suggested slowly releasing the tritium-contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean over about a ten-year period. The water is stored on-site in almost a thousand large tanks of known chemistry.

Although not intuitive, this is a very good idea. Tritium is the mildly radioactive isotope of hydrogen that has two neutrons and one proton, with radioactivity so low that no environmental or human problems have ever come from it, even though it is a common radioactive element in the environment. Tritium is formed naturally by atmospheric processes as well as in nuclear weapons testing and in nuclear power plants.
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Best line in the article is his closing statement:
I understand that scientists have no decision-making power, but they really should be listened to.
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