Wrecked Fukushima storage tank leaking highly radioactive water (new leak)

[kristopher]

Wrecked Fukushima storage tank leaking highly radioactive water
By Yoko Kubota and Yuka Obayashi

TOKYO (Reuters) - Contaminated water with dangerously high levels of radiation is leaking from a storage tank at Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, the most serious setback to the cleanup of the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

The storage tank breach of about 300 metric tons of water is separate from contaminated water leaks reported in recent weeks, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co said on Tuesday.

The latest leak is so contaminated that a person standing half a meter (1 ft 8 inches) away would, within an hour, receive a radiation dose five times the average annual global limit for nuclear workers.

After 10 hours, a worker in that proximity to the leak would develop radiation sickness with symptoms including nausea and a drop in white blood cells.

"That is a huge amount of radiation. The situation is getting worse,"...

http://news.yahoo.com/operator-crippled-japan-nuclear-plant-says-tank-leaked-025549782.html

[House of Roberts]

1. Is this the leak they previously said they couldn't find?

Or a previously undisclosed leak they knew about all along?

[kristopher]

2. As the header says "new leak"

The article expands on that.

[Yo_Mama]

3. This is a kind of amazing

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20130820_26.html

They don't know where the tank is leaking from. But they have a barrier erected around these tanks to catch leaks, because relatively small leaks have kept recurring.

BUT, some of the highly radioactive water leaked outside the barrier, because it's been raining there, so the valve for an internal drainage system was left open and so the barrier was of no practical use. The reason they wanted to drain the rainwater was obviously to prevent flooding, but also so that if a worker wandered by and saw water they would know that the tank was leaking. But the tank must have been leaking for a while.

This is a Level 1 incident now.