90,000 tons of leaked radioactive water a Level-7 nuclear accident by itself
13 May 2011 (Asahi Shimbun) – As if Tokyo Electric Power Co., the embattled operator of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, didn’t have enough problems, another daunting task is what to do with an estimated 90,000 tons of radioactive water. This vast amount remains from the pumping of water to cool reactors after the plant’s regular cooling systems were disabled in the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake and seawater from the tsunami. The problem is growing by the day, as the volume of contaminated water keeps increasing. TEPCO needs to treat and recycle contaminated water escaping from the facilities to maintain the cooling of the reactors without increasing the volume of contaminated water. It signed a deal with France’s Areva SA, a nuclear engineering company, to start treating the radioactive water in June. But Areva’s equipment is capable of treating only 1,200 tons a day, and it is not clear if it can handle a total of 90,000 tons. In dealing with this volume of contaminated water, the plant’s No. 2 reactor presents the most serious challenge of its four stricken reactors. … The total amount of contaminated water at the No. 2 reactor was estimated at 25,000 tons before the transfer work got under way, equivalent to about 400,000 terabecquerels of radioactivity. When Japan’s nuclear industry regulator, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), upgraded the severity level of the accident at the plant to a maximum 7 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) on April 12, it cited an estimate for the radiation emitted into the atmosphere at 370,000 terabecquerels as the basis for the raise. This means that radioactive water at the No. 2 reactor alone suffices to be classified as a level-7 accident. …
