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Today in Terribly Contaminated Water:

  • “Two years after a triple meltdown that grew into the world’s second worst nuclear disaster, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is faced with a new crisis: a flood of highly radioactive wastewater that workers are struggling to contain.”  (NY Times)
  • “Hurricane Sandy’s huge coastal floods flushed 10 billion gallons of sewage into New York and New Jersey’s waterways — and turned most of the shoreline into a filth-filled toilet for days, according to a report set to be released Tuesday. New York and New Jersey released 10 billion gallons of sewage — virtually all of the 11 billion gallons that leaked into rivers, lakes, streams and oceans between Washington, D.C. and Connecticut.” (NY Daily News)

BABY’S LAMA   Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama holds his hand up to a train window to greet a baby held by its mother at the Koriyama railway station in northern Japan.  The Dalai Lama was there to deliver a speech to Fukushima residents racked with the aftermath of the March 11 tsunami and the accident at the city’s nuclear power plant.  (Photo: Kimimasa Mayama / EPA via the Telegraph)
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BABY’S LAMA   Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama holds his hand up to a train window to greet a baby held by its mother at the Koriyama railway station in northern Japan.  The Dalai Lama was there to deliver a speech to Fukushima residents racked with the aftermath of the March 11 tsunami and the accident at the city’s nuclear power plant.  (Photo: Kimimasa Mayama / EPA via the Telegraph)

Workers at the all-but-destroyed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan continue to face dangerous — even deadly — levels of radiation in their ongoing attempts to stabilize the plant.  Via MSNBC.com: Pockets of lethal levels of radiation have been detected at Japan’s crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in a reminder of the risks faced by workers battling to contain the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) reported on Monday that radiation exceeding 10 sieverts (10,000 millisieverts) per hour was found at the bottom of a ventilation stack standing between two reactors. Tepco said Tuesday it found another spot on the ventilation stack itself where radiation exceeded 10 sieverts per hour, a level that could lead to incapacitation or death after just several seconds of exposure. The company used equipment to measure radiation from a distance and was unable to ascertain the exact level because the device’s maximum reading is 10 sieverts. While Tepco said the readings would not hinder its goal of stabilizing the Fukushima reactors by January, experts warned that worker safety could be at risk if the operator prioritized hitting the deadline over radiation risks. (Handout image taken by a gamma ray camera showing the bottom of a ventilation stack where radiation exceeding 10 sieverts per hour - seen here in red - by TEPCO via Reuters / MSNBC.com)
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Workers at the all-but-destroyed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan continue to face dangerous — even deadly — levels of radiation in their ongoing attempts to stabilize the plant.  Via MSNBC.com:

Pockets of lethal levels of radiation have been detected at Japan’s crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in a reminder of the risks faced by workers battling to contain the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) reported on Monday that radiation exceeding 10 sieverts (10,000 millisieverts) per hour was found at the bottom of a ventilation stack standing between two reactors.

Tepco said Tuesday it found another spot on the ventilation stack itself where radiation exceeded 10 sieverts per hour, a level that could lead to incapacitation or death after just several seconds of exposure.

The company used equipment to measure radiation from a distance and was unable to ascertain the exact level because the device’s maximum reading is 10 sieverts.

While Tepco said the readings would not hinder its goal of stabilizing the Fukushima reactors by January, experts warned that worker safety could be at risk if the operator prioritized hitting the deadline over radiation risks.

(Handout image taken by a gamma ray camera showing the bottom of a ventilation stack where radiation exceeding 10 sieverts per hour - seen here in red - by TEPCO via Reuters / MSNBC.com)

Nuclear experts say new findings of highly toxic plutonium in the soil outside Japan’s beleaguered Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant show the crisis unleashed by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami is far from over.

“Minute amounts of plutonium have been detected for the first time in soil outside the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant,” Japanese broadcaster NHK reported today.

Japanese researchers who analyzed roadside soil samples taken some 1.7 kilometers from the power station’s front gate on April 21 “found minute amounts of three kinds of plutonium,” NHK reported. The Japanese researchers said the quantities of plutonium found in the soil are roughly similar to that which has been found at past nuclear bomb test sites.

Plutonium is highly toxic—whether ingested or inhaled—because it emits alpha radiation “that can easily penetrate membranes inside the body,” Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Arms Control Association, told The Envoy.

“Plutonium Found Near Fukushima Shows Nuclear Crisis Is Far From Over” via Yahoo News

A month into Japan’s nuclear crisis, no robots have been put to work at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Instead, the plant’s operator is relying on a cheaper, expendable resource: humans.

According to the latest report, published yesterday in London’s Financial Times, Japan has only two robots nominally designed for radiation, and they’re sitting idle because neither can do anything useful at Fukushima. How could such a robotically advanced country be so unprepared? The Times echoes Slate’s previous report:

‘Japanese robotics researchers say efforts to develop robots for the nuclear industry have been held back by a lack of enthusiasm from utilities such as Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), operator of Fukushima Daiichi. Japan’s government encouraged development of nuclear-response robots for several years after an accident at an atomic-fuel reprocessing station in 1999 released radiation that killed two workers. But with no large market to spur private investment, prototypes languished in the lab and research programmes have been scaled back.’

In other words, TEPCO and other plant operators decided that robots were too expensive.

Slate Magazine, “In Japan’s Nuclear Cleanup, Is Human Life Cheaper Than Machines?”
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