Radiation inside Japan nuclear plant rises sharply

[ayin jade]

Tokyo Electric Power Company says it has detected radioactive materials 10-million-times normal levels in water at the No.2 reactor complex of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

The plant operator, known as TEPCO, says it measured 2.9-billion becquerels of radiation per one cubic centimeter of water from the basement of the turbine building attached to the Number 2 reactor.

The level of contamination is about 1,000 times that of the leaked water already found in the basements of the Number 1 and 3 reactor turbine buildings.

The company says the latest reading is 10-million times the usual radioactivity of water circulating within a normally operating reactor.

TEPCO says the radioactive materials include 2.9-billion becquerels of iodine-134, 13-million becquerels of iodine-131, and 2.3-million becquerels each for cesium 134 and 137.

These substances are emitted during nuclear fission inside a reactor core.

The company says the extremely contaminated water may stem from damaged fuel in the reactor, and are trying to determine how the leakage occurred.

University of Tokyo graduate school professor Naoto Sekimura says the leak may come from the suppression chamber of the Number 2 reactor, which is known to be damaged. The chamber is designed to contain overflows of radioactive substances from the reactor.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/27_12.html

TOKYO

[other one]

sounds like it may well be time for the sand and concrete instead of water....

[Guest -RadicalMan-]

until the Japanese allow independent testing related to radiation levels we won't really know what the levels are. Yesterday or the day before it was reported that the levels were 10,000,000 times above safety level....yet today the report is someone miscalculated multiplying the figure by 100. There is no trust left in the regulatory group there.

[Guest]

Men (And Woman) Are Dying

Praying~!

[other one]

until the Japanese allow independent testing related to radiation levels we won't really know what the levels are. Yesterday or the day before it was reported that the levels were 10,000,000 times above safety level....yet today the report is someone miscalculated multiplying the figure by 100. There is no trust left in the regulatory group there.

It's my understanding that the first person who checked the water puddles looked wrong at the detector and thought it was at the ten million above range and didn't bother to recheck as he was supposed to (which I don't think I'd blame his panic).

Problem is we have a highly over reactive news media making everything look worse than what could be; and we have a company which is trying to make things look as good as can be thought; and truth of the matter is somewhere in between, but the between is at the far ends of the entire spectrum..... I don't think any of us have a grasp on what reality is with the situation there. And I think that bugs me the most. What real data I've seen makes me think it's not really as disasterous as it's being made to look..... but the potential is there, but there is much that can be done even now if it's necessary.

When it looks like it's just not going to be controllable, they can just cover it with sand and that with concrete and simply let the core melt down into the bottom of the reactor vessel which will not let it combine into a single mass as Chermobyl did.

As long as there isn't a huge explosion in the reactor that blows the actual plutonium fuel rod material out of the building it won't be that big of a deal...... with the way the reactor is made, that is extremely unlikely.

[ayin jade]

Today I hear on the news that the reading was in error.

Radiation though is spreading outside there. Radiation from those reactors have been detected in Arizona and Nevada, even though they say its in levels too low to cause harm.

[other one]

What is rather refreshing to me is that they are actually able to detect these minuscule levels of radiation and that they are actually looking.

[MelodyCat]

Edited March 31, 2011 by MelodyCat