General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Plutonium from Fukushima is a global catastrophe. [View all]questionseverything
(9,631 posts)In July 2013, the groundwater flowing beneath the NPP recorded the highest readings yet measured, a rise of 9000% since the beginning of the disaster (900 million Bq/m3 of all ?particles- Sr, Cs, Tr, Pu). On 22 July, one day after the LDP and New Komeito won the national election, TEPCO operators admitted to a daily discharge of 300 tonnes of irradiated water into the sea (since upgraded to 400 tonnes),54 and the leak of an additional 24 billion Bq of tritiated water from storage tanks into the ocean.55 Aoyama Michio, Japan Meteorological Agency scientist, at the IAEA 2013 Scientific Forum reported 60 billion Bq of Cs137 and Sr-90 being released directly into the Pacific ocean from the NPP on a daily basis (900 billion Bq respectively per month). This was even greater than a recent estimate by Kanda Jōta, an oceanographer at Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, who calculated that the NPP is leaking 0.3 Tbq (300 billion Bq) of Cs137 per month.56 Aoyama included the amount of water vacuumed from the port by Units 5 and 6 to cool the reactors, subsequently discharged north of the site.57
Contrary to assurances from the nuclear industry, tritiated water (3H2O, or heavy water) binds to the DNA and can cause great damage to life. There is no method yet discovered to remove Tritium once it has bonded with water.58 In addition the total release from the reactors into the permeated basements has been revised upward to 276 PetaBq Cs-137 (40 percent of the reactor core inventory), and Strontium-90 from 23 to 33 PBq (4.4 to 6.3 percent of the reactor core inventory). This is roughly triple the total amount released into the air from the Chernobyl accident.59
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