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Motegi, TEPCO chief pledge action on Fukushima water leak

17 Comments
By MIKI TODA and KOJI UEDA

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17 Comments
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Wow Motegi, I wonder who created the lax environment that such sloppy maintenance could occur? Hmm...restart nukes under lax restrictions, hand out tax money to support TEPCO under lax or no oversight, man it goes on and on.

From now on the government is going to take charge? Quick Martha, grab the kids and run, them thar's no good comin' down from the hills!

6 ( +6 / -0 )

“The urgency of the situation is very high,” Motegi said.

Welcome to reality, pal. Nice of you to join the rest of us, even though you're two years too late and your party should have had better compliance systems in place since the 1970s anyway.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

TEPCO still hasn't learned its lesson? Didn't they learn from 3/11 that it doesn't pay to cut corners? And the government steps in AFTER the Pacific Ocean is contaminated from Japan to North America. Haven't they learned their lesson? Interesting website: search Evacuate Fukushima

0 ( +2 / -2 )

Oh dear. A week's worth of the usual standard excuses and apologies in one day.

...pledged urgent government action....the urgency of the situation is very high...TEPCO President Naomi Hirose apologized for the leaks...Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the recent major leak was extremely regrettable...from here on the government will take charge...

Nobuyuki Hatta, director of the Fukushima Prefecture Fisheries Research Center, said the trend had been positive before the latest leaks, with fewer fish found exceeding radiation limits. Less testing, less fish found! Great solution.

A two-person team has been inspecting the 1,000 tanks during twice-daily “patrols..

Let's see - an average 10 hour day, 2 x 1,000 tanks to inspect = 3.3 tanks per minute, including walking time between tanks - if the tanks are 15 seconds apart (as per images of packed tanks) that works out to less than 5 seconds per tank! They obviously can't manage more than a glance at each tank. And no lunch or coffee breaks included.

I think it is safe to conclude that they don't inspect them, they just walk past them...

4 ( +4 / -0 )

People do not worry, the government will find more unqualified temporary workers who owe money to shady groups. Then they can with their vast knowledge walk around checking the inadequate made tanks that were supplied by their employers. It's a perfect circle, its regrettable that people understand the how much corruption was involved.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

Most of the water is thought to have seeped into the ground, but some may have entered the sea through a rainwater gutter, it said.

Why do they keep saying "seeped into the ground" as if that were the end of it. The radioactive water that has seeped into the ground has not vanished. It has joined the other radioactive groundwater flowing out to sea, or it will next time there's a nice storm.

Farmboy totally agree! Due to high ocean surface temperatures the JMA said this morning that typhoons that may hurl toward Japan will be traveling with more force and velocity on a more northward track than previous years. Here's hoping one doesn't thrash it's way up tier the plant!

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Fishermen there should be given vocational training in some other fields from now on... (Or maybe should've been given since 2011...)

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Their pledges be relied on as much as TEPCO's tanks can be relied on to hold in water.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Quite contrary to a report I read on an international news site that stated TEPCO would have no choice than to pump most of the water into the ocean.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Dear Disllusioned please refrain from reading international News it is regrettable and will only cause confusion. Please enjoy this meal made from the totally safe foods from a prefecture "somewhere" in Japan.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

These boobs are still in charge and no one is in jail?

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Now that the entire area is subsiding, cooling pool 4 could fall over and cause a major pyrophoric catastrophe. Pyrophoric means that the plant could go literally on fire. In a (pyrophoric fire) you pull part of the fuel rod assemblies that are bent and twisted, if they bump into each other or just a boronated rubber wears down over time from neutron flux degradation, you're going to have a giant fire with most of the mass of those fuel rod assemblies will be converted to a vapor and end up in the troposphere. You could have a hydrovolcanic explosion which can blow a number of fuel rod assemblies as far away as 60 miles away, I mean 60 kilometers.

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As much as I too am totally disgusted with the balls up these fools are making of this, it seems the environmental damage will remain local even if they do start pumping the water into the Pacific. And, really, when you think about it, the world has been using its ocean as garbage dumps for centuries and the accumulated plastics are much more of a disaster than the diluted radioactive waste from Fukushima. Of course, it means there will be no swimming, surfing or fishing on the east of Japan, but at least it will be a localized disaster and will not effect the rest of the world too much.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24100-should-fukushimas-radioactive-water-be-dumped-at-sea.html#.UhweSNLjdZ4

0 ( +1 / -1 )

“From here on the government will take charge.”

Oh, I feel so much better now.

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Japan’s industry minister pledged urgent government action Monday to curb leaks of radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Would this 'action' be a meeting by any chance?

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Oh, the Japanese government will take over and then who are they going to consult and ask, TEPCO? I never eat fish anymore in the United States. Just the thought of eating fish is repulsive. I'll bet that sushi bars are shaking in their boots.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

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