NHK: Failure at Fukushima — Gundersen: Extraordinarily radioactive leak will be in Pacific shortly; “Site is going to bleed into ocean for 100 years”
ENENews.com
February 21st, 2014
NHK, Feb. 21, 2014: Measures fail to stop Fukushima plant leaks — [Tepco] has been coming up with countermeasures to deal with repeated leaks […] despite the measures, 100 tons of radioactive water leaked on Wednesday and Thursday. […] Last August, more than 300 tons of highly radioactive wastewater leaked from one of the plant’s storage tanks. […] In October, another leak of highly contaminated water occurred, this time from a different tank on the site. [Tepco] said the leak resulted from overfilling the tank. […] This time the water again overflowed out of a tank […] they will seek additional measures to address these new problems.
Asahi Shimbun, Feb. 21, 2014: Tests by TEPCO indicated 240 million becquerels of beta-ray emitting radioactive substances per liter of water, including radioactive strontium, were contained in the water that leaked. […] As of Feb. 18, the volume of radioactive water stored in the 1,000 holding tanks at the plant totaled about 520,000 tons. Of that, 340,000 tons is highly radioactive, according to TEPCO.
Arnie Gundersen, Fairewinds chief engineer, Feb. 20, 2014: […] This was an extraordinarily highly radioactive leak. They claim it didn’t run directly into the ocean but almost as bad it’s leaked into the ground water. And the ground water will get to the ocean shortly. So, It is just one more source that will definitely contaminate the ocean if not now – eventually. […] I think Tokyo Electric is pretending to be the victim of these problems instead of the perpetrator of these problems. They created this problem and they have a responsibility to make sure it doesn’t happen […] leaks on the site that never seem to stop. […] it went into the ground and is moving downward into the ground water, which will get to the ocean shortly. […] it is heading for the ocean anyway along with many other leaks. The site is going to bleed into the ocean for a hundred years. […] The isotopes that are in this tank is something called strontium 90, and it is a bone seeker that causes leukemia. And it stays in the environment for 300 years. […] They have contaminated the entire ground water underneath the site and eventually all of that water will move into the Pacific.
