TV: Nuclear waste spilling into Pacific Ocean after power outage hits Fukushima plant — Radiation Expert: Site is so radioactive and unstable “it may never be contained”

Kyodo News, Apr 21, 2015: Outage hits pumps at Fukushima plant; toxic water leaks into ocean – [Tepco] on Tuesday reported that a power outage has shut down all eight water transfer pumps… and that radioactive water is again leaking into the Pacific Ocean… The beleaguered utility said it was checking into what happened and how much water had leaked. The pumping had begun last Friday, in response to a finding in late February that highly radioactive water in the channel was reaching the ocean. NHK, Apr 21, 2015: Radioactive water leaking into sea — [TEPCO] says radioactively contaminated rainwater is spilling outside the facility’s port after pumps to prevent leakage stopped working… The firm started operating the pumps last Friday. But on Tuesday, a worker found that they had stopped and the water was going into the sea. TEPCO officials say they don’t know the amount or radioactive level of the water.
NHK, Apr 21, 2015: [TEPCO] says radioactive rainwater has stopped leaking into the sea as pumps are back in operation… The pumps were used to draw the contaminated rainwater from a drainage channel to prevent leaks… They said a worker found the pumps had stopped, allowing the water to spill outside the facility’s port. The officials say the rainwater spilled into the sea for more than 11 hours, but they do not know the amount. But they say the radioactive levels of the drainage water were low… The pumps had been installed as a stopgap measure to reroute the channel… rainwater that had accumulated on the roof of a reactor building was spilling through the drainage channel. This rooftop water contained comparatively high levels of radioactive substances.
Dr. Janette D. Sherman, MD
, Apr 17, 2015:  I was hired by the Atomic Energy Commission as a radiological monitor at the “Rad Lab,” University of California in Berkeley… While working at the university “Rad Lab,” I was offered a research job at the U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory… Chernobyl, which melted down in 1986, is still leaking and the sarcophagus being built to cover it is not finished. But the most critical site is Fukushima – so radioactive and unstable that it may never be contained… four years after the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown, radioactive materials continue to flow into the air and ocean. Given that it takes 10 half-lives for an isotope to completely decay, for sr-90 and cs-137, that will be nearly three centuries… in one lifetime our world has become a massive dumping ground – toxic in various ways to all life.
None of today’s reports mention that hundreds of tons of radioactive groundwater enter the Pacific Ocean each day. See also: Highly radioactive liquid flowing into Pacific — Experts: Amount entering ocean “increasing by 400 tons daily” (VIDEO)

Published: April 21st, 2015 at 5:41 pm ET By ENENews