Tag Archives: leak

News media finally reporting Fukushima leaking radioactive water into ocean

It’s not just a storage tank, either; radioactive water has been leaking for more than two years, from the broken reactor buildings into groundwater and the Pacific Ocean. It’s not just a local Japanese problem: Fukushima is here.

The cautious version, by Antoni Slodkowski and Mari Saito, Reuters, today, Radioactive water seeping into Pacific from Fukushima is ’emergency,’ official says,

Highly radioactive water seeping into the ocean from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is creating an “emergency” that the operator is struggling to contain, an official from the country’s nuclear watchdog said Monday.

This contaminated groundwater has breached an underground barrier, is rising toward the surface and is exceeding legal limits of radioactive discharge, Shinji Kinjo, head of a Nuclear Regulatory Authority task force, told Reuters.

Countermeasures planned by Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) are only a temporary solution, he said.

VOA News, also today, admits leaks have been going on for more than two years and nobody knows how to stop them, Fukushima Operator Under Fire for Radioactive Leaks,

Rianne Teule, a nuclear campaigner for Greenpeace International, says the issue is a serious environmental concern.

“Most of all it proves TEPCO is incapable of dealing with this situation and that the Japanese authorities should really step in and ensure that proper action is taken to stop the leaks,” said Teule.

But it is not clear what other actions TEPCO could take at this point. Former Nuclear power plant designer Masashi Goto worked on several projects with TEPCO.

“The situation is already beyond what Tepco can handle,” said Goto. “If Continue reading →

Potential defects shipped to Farley reactors and four others

No worries about this reactor coolant system defect; Westinghouse says so, and didn’t even list Vogtle or Diablo Canyon, where Southern Company and PG&E said they were going to install these shields. Nevermind a reactor operator warned us back in January. Westinghouse did list “Beaver Valley Unit 2, Callaway, D.C. Cook Unit 1, Farley Units 1 and 2, and Wolf Creek”.

NRC Event Notification Report for July 29, 2013 Event Number 49217:

POTENTIAL EXISTENCE OF DEFECTS IN SHIELD PASSIVE THERMAL SHUTDOWN SEAL SYSTEM

“The defect being reported concerns an identified inconsistency between the intended design functionality of the SHIELD passive thermal shutdown seal (SDS) and that observed during post-service testing.

“The purpose of the SDS is to reduce current reactor coolant system inventory losses to very small leakage rates for a plant that results in the loss of all reactor coolant pump (RCP) seal cooling. The SDS is a Continue reading →

Radioactive tritium leak at Plant Hatch discovered yesterday

Will Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers say this tritium leak at Plant Hatch is not a problem, like he did about the one in September 2011? Meanwhile, how many tritium leaks have you heard of from solar panels or wind mills?

According to the NRC’s Event Notification Report for February 14, 2013, OFFSITE NOTIFICATION DUE TO TRITIUM RELEASE ONSITE,

“As part of routine rounds on 2/13/13, site personnel discovered an overflow condition at a collection tank containing water with low levels of tritium (approximately 6,000 pCi/L). The discharge pump for the tank was found to be nonfunctional which resulted in the overflow condition. Following discovery, a portable pump was utilized to pump the water to the normal monitored discharge path and terminate the overflow condition. The exact volume could not be determined but it is estimated that the volume of water that overflowed to the ground was greater than the 100 gallon threshold for voluntary reporting as indicated in Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) 07-07, ‘Industry Ground Water Initiative-Final Guidance Document.’ A rough estimate of the release is between 100 and 300 gallons. The tritium was contained to a small area on the plant site in the vicinity of the discharge structure, and there is no significant potential for off-site impact or impact to on-site personnel.

“Because the leak remained on site, there will be no offsite impact to drinking water sources. Furthermore, the release posed no threat to employees or the public. Southern Nuclear [SNC] will continue to monitor the affected area as required.

Sure, and they’ve got a ten-mile-radius emergency plan for Plant Hatch, too! Nevermind the Floridan Aquifer that underlies the whole coastal plain hereabouts, and that we drink from over here, only 100 miles from Plant Hatch. The report says they’ll report to the state:

Continue reading →