Officials of Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said Thursday that radioactive water containing strontium-90 leaked out of the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea.
Strontium-90 is a radioactive isotope of strontium, with a half-life of 28.8 years. Its presence in the human body can cause bone cancer, cancer of nearby tissues and leukemia.
TEPCO officials apologized at a news conference for the leakage which occurred early Thursday morning, TBS reported. TEPCO said the leak was from a pipe attached to a temporary decontamination system, and the water had already gone through some of the cleansing process.
The water, once it has been used to cool the reactors, contains massive amounts of radioactive substances such as cesium and strontium, and is put into the water-processing facility so it can be recycled for use as a coolant.
The water is believed to have leaked out for about two hours before it was stopped shortly after 2 a.m., TEPCO said, according to TBS.
TEPCO said it believed that up to 12 tons of waste water containing strontium leaked into the sea.
This is not the first time that strontium has leaked from the Fukushima plant. Last November, radioactive strontium was found in soil in three locations in Tokyo, peaking at 51 becquerels per kilogram. In December, about 150 liters of waste water containing strontium flowed into the sea.
Fukushima's makeshift water-treatment system has been hit by a series of problems since the government declared the plant was in cold shutdown last December.
© Japan Today
72 Comments
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nandakandamanda
Why am I not shocked?
Has the abnormal suddenly become normal?
Noripinhead
Damn. And I had fish for lunch today too.
Cricky
Agree above it's become normal to accept this, but alsofeeling incredulous that it continues to poison the environment with no charges and no government action beside the invertible "poses no health risk" or it's "regrettable" and surprise that other countries aren't interested in food or visiting Japan. One year plus and still no control or honesty about what happens.
Rd Garrow
abnormal insanity seems to rule the day-4 times the new legal radiation limit-just raise the acceptable level and voila,new safe level...ic how that works
jforce
Gee I wonder what the acceptable levels of strontium 90 are in Europe? This is sad. I await the spin on this.
Disillusioned
Leaked or pumped?
ExportExpert
Nodding bowing phelbs, "Sorry" makes it all better ?
The justice ministry need to start arresting Tepco officials for negligence and endangering public safety.
Unbelievable they think an apology fixes everything.
alladin
This is just to confirm what I have predicted in the past to be true. The Japanese government is letting TEPCO contaminate all of the ocean, food and water all over Japan. 12 tons is a whole lot of leakage. Actually I bet it actually more than what they are telling everyone.
tairitsuiken
Agree with some of the above posters - not getting surprised any longer. Which is both unfortunate and sad. For me, a big part of why I likes living in Japan has always been the exquisite food. Not so any longer. The constant bad news, being ventilated in bite size pieces, makes me think hard about the safety of the food and it affects my liking of it. Very unfortunate 'cause I think this country has a great food culture.
It sounds so incredibly bad that radioacive water spills out into the ocean.
The very passive populace (no questions asked, daijobu!!!) also makes me reconsider what kind of place I am living in.
bello420
Why don't they just encase this in a concrete sarcophagus and call it a day? Seal the whole mess up for good! The area around the Fukushima dai-ichi is permamnenlty radiated and should be off limits. When is the J-gov going to make a good decision finally!?
Aqualung
As long as they apologized.
tokyokawasaki
Another BIG FLAG shouting - I am incompetent and my clumsiness is very dangerous. I need to be taken over.... I cannot be trusted to make coffee, yet alone manage a crisis...
Isn't that what the above articles states?
RomeoR
Unless you desire to glow in the dark, those who can should get out of that country now.
RR
delrennich
High time to leave Japan.
nath
And I'm guessing the next news article about this leak would come from the government stating that the leak "poses no threat" to the populace, and that TEPCO would again ask for several billion yen.
Wait, isn't that the tune they always play?
Fadamor
This is a JT article, so it's appropriate to ask...
Why the difference in measuring units, JT? Someone in the office unable to do the math? Past leaks are reported in liters, but this new leak is reported in TONS? How about we keep them all the same for comparison's sake? 12 tons of water (24,000 lbs) works out to 10,886 liters of water according to the online converter I used.
You should strive to keep your units of measure in relation to each other. Mixing them up like that makes it look like you were trying to hide the real amount that was spilled. Face it, "12" looks SO much smaller than "150"... until you look at the units of measure involved.
GW
Fadomar
Tons, litres, kgs its ALL metric no biggie
The_True
i only keep wondering when the International Community going to put a stop to this!
is the US that dont want anyone to said anything about they child "Japan"?
i mean what is going to take?
KariHaruka
Thanks for keeping up the incompetence TEPCO!!
waltery
"Visit Japan" Land of the rising becerals. Thanks for another boost to the decline in health and tourism opertunity TEPCO.
Laguna
Would that be metric or imperial tons?
Cletus
12 Tons, they lost 12 tons of highly radioactive water into the ocean!!!!! This company is beyond a joke they are a criminally negligent bunch of morons and the J government is not much better for letting these oxygen thieves continue to handle their own bungling.
Oh wait they apologized, ok everythings much better now. WHAT!!!! They apologized who give a flying rats a*** if they apologized what are they going to do to prevent this happening again apart from file the apology for later use. What a joke!!!!
cactusJack
Coming to drinking water near you.
ExportExpert
Tepco killing the enviroment, the people and any chances of tourism $'s or people wanting products from japan, tepco have almost single handedly destroyed this country and eveything in it.
Time is getting closer and closer for departure sorry to say, was prepared to live my life out here but now having a rethink and rejigging things to exit stage left.
Country, enviroment, tourism, business, nature and the people are being destroyed.
Cant stand by and watch it much longer.
Tepco needs to be stopped !
YongYang
The ongoing catastrophe at Dai-Ichi has already released the most Strontium-90 into a marine environment in history. Bio-accumulation, read up.
Antonios_M
This company should really get an award of incompetence. It's unbelievable...
Yubaru
Good bye. I'm sure you'll tell all your friends and family in gaikokuland that Japan isn't safe. That's a lie btw, the area around Fukushima is a hazard but Fukushima is not the entire country. Maybe you'll glow in the dark but not me!
nath
Stop scaremongering folks! The last thing we need is "panic". Panic is worse than the actual effects of radiation as it is bad for the precious economy. If you leave Tokyo the wheels will fall off the wagon. Stop talking about this and go back to work and consuming.
mekki
I do not believe nobody is saying this is good news but 12 tons is about the same amount that fits to a small single-tank truck. Sorry but I refuse to declare the whole island of Japan dead just yet.
Cletus
ssway
Yeah exactly they have issued an apology all is good in the world again right? Not like they are finding any radiation anywhere away from the plant now is it (see story on fish, see story on Yokohama etc etc etc) But we must protect the economy that is way more important than mere health effects from TEPCO incompetence and government bungling true?
Well now we cant have that now can we. We must rebury our heads and remember the experts (TEPCO) are managing this...... HAHAHAHAHAHA thats hilarious I dont know whether your being sarcastic or just gullible....
nath
Agree with mekki.
Time for the JT-Experts to step up and show how it is done correctly. Some posters seem to have all the answers.
Worrying news for sure but this will go on for decades as that is what it takes for a nuke plant to be decommissioned.
Jumping at shadows, IMHO.
Cletus
It''S ME,
Understand what you and mekki are saying and do agree to some extent, where we differ is when is enough enough? Yes its 12 tons about the amount that fits in a small truck l do agree. But how about the last time, the time before that, and the times before that. Fact is this isnt the first time, and it will not be the last. How long do we sit here and say ok its only small amount leaking, how long before we are entitled to say hey TEPCO enoughs enough get it into gear and sort this s**t out.
Utrack
This has been happening off an on for over a year now,
April 5, 2011: Tepco says it is continuing to pump millions of gallons of contaminated water, overflow from efforts to cool the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, into the sea. The move is to help cooling efforts as workers attempt to slow a major leak of highly radioactive water from the plant. Japan says dumping radioactive water in ocean doesn't violate law
April 6, 2011: Tepco says it has succeeded in slowing leaking water from the No. 2 reactor. Emergency workers have managed to stop the radioactive water, measured at 7.5 million times the legal limit, from leaking out of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant's reactor No. 2 and into the ocean, say officials.
There have been many incidents of leakage since April, 2011
smithinjapan
Don't eat anything 'made in Japan', for if nothing else it will be met with nothing but apologies after the fact. But hey, where's Edano saying it's not harmful?
smithinjapan
It"s ME: "Time for the JT-Experts to step up and show how it is done correctly. Some posters seem to have all the answers."
How about not pretending everything is stable, for starters, and letting in foreign experts to help analyze and deal with the problem? Nah... to easy.
Cletus
smithinjapan
I know l miss the little guy he was so reassuring......
yanee
Zichi - You should be scared of what you are NOT being told by the Government and TEPCO. They have proven time and again that they only tell the truth with this debacle when they get caught. From the beginning, with no notes being taken, nobody taking the helm, nor the responsibility, the only people who saved the plant and the local area as much as it is were the engineers on site who didn't listen to the officials and decided to go ahead and dump saltwater on the whole meltdown to save it. This is the Three Stooges in real life! Anyone who thinks otherwise is a lamb being led to slaughter.
nath
Smithinjapan.
No-one is pretending that everything is ok and stable. I do remember Chernobyl and how it affected my country. Recall those days?
Fukushima happened and we need to deal with it, of course if anybody overseas can undo the event why don't they do so. Where are all your overseas experts? No takers so far.
Like the IAEA and the people that designed the plant. To be brutally honest they don't have the answers either.
The brown smelly stuff hit the spinning thing and we got to deal with it. That's all.
I am sure Japan would pay any overseas expert well that knows how to do the job properly.
ExportExpert
After years of reading this site and finally subscribing I can say with out a doubt when ever i read Zichi's posts they are always well researched and seem to be factual as opposed to some who bang away on the keyboard to make out to their co-workers they're working and have nothing else to do.
Go Zichi
bajhista65
The leak found early Thursday? Who are Tepco and Edano fooling.... hahahaha It's been leaking ever since... just say that shit reactors are doomed. And nothing more can do just to wait for 30~50 years for the radioactive material to disappear. Not to mention people getting Cancer with the same period of time. End of the story and speculations and media sensationalism in news reporting and politicians riding with the disaster for popularity in the next coming elections.
Ian Duncan
Oh, this is appalling and entirely predictable at the same time. When will anybody at TEPCO be held to account?
Not until TEPCO stop making huge political donations out of the money we taxpayers are subsidising them with, it appears.
smithinjapan
It"s ME: "No-one is pretending that everything is ok and stable."
Except the Japanese government... or did you miss the 'let's let the people visit their homes in a first attempt at moving back' thing last week? How about 'cold shutdown' and all the disasters that have happened since, but hey... it's all okay according to the J-government.
"Fukushima happened and we need to deal with it, of course if anybody overseas can undo the event why don't they do so. Where are all your overseas experts? No takers so far."
'UNDO the event'? How on earth do you do that? I was talking about helping with the consequences and helping to rebuild, for which many 'takers' have offered help but Japanese red tape and the yakuza have kept them from doing so.
"The brown smelly stuff hit the spinning thing and we got to deal with it. That's all."
Yep, we've heard that 'share the burden' line time and time again in an attempt to deflect blame and avoid punishment. An effective tool in Japan.
"I am sure Japan would pay any overseas expert well that knows how to do the job properly."
Obviously they won't -- they prefer allowing an electric company to hire jumpers and 'suicide squads' to try and do the dirty work without record keeping so there's little or no culpability. But hey, TEPCO's next apology for a leakage is just around the corner, so feel free to bring it up again then.
Hôjô Sôun
ExportExpert,
Same here. This has revealed the gaping hole at the center of this postwar system. Leaving is the best way to stop throwing your tax money into that hole.
Utrack
zichi
Radioactive water seeps into sea from stricken nuclear plant
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2011/0406/Radioactive-leak-plugged-officials-now-eye-hydrogen-buildup-Japan-nuclear-timeline
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/8659895-regulator-says-radioactive-water-leaking-into-ocean-from-japanese-nuclear-plant
Photoman333
bello420: Why don't they just encase this in a concrete sarcophagus and call it a day?
I wish they could but I think the real, long-term problem is underneath the containment buildings. If there's corium down there and I can't believe there isn't, or won't be, how do you get underneath to put many meters of concrete there? "Deadly" wouldn't even begin to describe the radiation levels.
Cricky
12T /a truck load of radioactive DNA altering water gets leaked/dumped into the food chain and what's the reaction? Semantics and almost justification. A year has passed, it's far from being in control, despite what officials say. This press release (that's what it is) tells us it happened. We all muse over what we are not told until 6 months latter. It's a new definition of disaster. Just happy I'm not waiting for compensation.
YuriOtani
I like my fish with just a hint of strontium-90, seriously the clean up needs to be turned over to others. Non Japanese and non bribe-able at that. Suppose this is where Russia can step up to the plate. To speed up the cleanup, they can use TEPCO management for the risky parts.
kurisupisu
From an online site in Delaware.....
Strontium-90 is considered a cancer-causing substance because it damages the genetic material (DNA) in cells. In one geographical location near a nuclear weapons plant, an increase in leukemia (a form of cancer) was reported in people who swallowed a large amount of strontium-90 in water. In animal studies, researchers reported cancers of the bone, nose and lung, as well as leukemia. Animals receiving high doses of radiation to the skin developed skin and bone cancer.
&
@zichi Did you manage to access the link to the 100 degree C info?
YuriOtani
With the waste in the ocean there may be no need to come to Japan at all. The current will take the stuff into the most productive fishing waters in the world. So with your Alaska salmon and crabs you will be getting something extra.
nath
I want to know how this stuff is just 'leaking' after a whole year of possible measures to stop this. Is it a euphonium for 'deliberate dumping'?
Steve Mcgrew
12 tons/3168 gallons seems like a small amount but ,how toxic is this waste water and how many billions of gallons of seawater is needed to mix/dilute this toxic waste down to an environmentally safe level? Has anyone seen any Info stating the amounts of isotope concentration levels in the waste water? What does partially filtered water really mean? It is apparent that no quick fix will be found to the disaster but there should be some way to safely contain this waste water and prevent so many leaks/spills/or intentional dumps from continuing to occur.. There can be no question that there has been damage done to the Marine environment in the western Pacific ocean ,how much no one yet knows, The pacific Ocean is a huge body of water but how many PPM of radioactive waste can it safely absorb??
YuriOtani
The problem is nobody knows how this will affect the eco system. Perhaps this is more readily absorbed by certain plants that are eaten by small animals who are eaten by larger ones. It might be possible for certain species to have high concentrations. "Shikata ga nai" is one of the major factors in the decline of Japan. The only question is how much else is being covered up?
YongYang
@Zichi: 'waster water'? Come again? Waste water? NO. Water contaminated with one the most poisonous radioactive isotopes known. 'Waste'. Ha. You NEED to be scared of what you are fed, two words: Cold Shutdown. Laughable if you were nourished by THAT. This 'govt' --actually just a continuation of what has been 'in power' since the end of the 'Pacific War'-- didn't even keep 'minutes', you know a 'record' of the meetings between those involved in what was to be done... and you feel 'safe' within their arms? Maybe all those e-mailers in the States need to contact someone who knows.
Olegek
<Officials of Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said Thursday that radioactive water containing strontium-90 leaked out of the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea.>
And this is high developed, superindustrialized, totaly automatized, Japan ?
scientific, well-organized, and super-efficient
I can not believe my eyes.....
UncleBudah
So, what is NEW????
oberst
The water, once it has been used to cool the reactors, contains massive amounts of radioactive substances such as cesium and strontium, and is put into the water-processing facility so it can be recycled for use as a coolant..........................................
if it is going to be recycled as a coolant, does it matter if it's radioactive ? Just keep it cold.
Looks like Japan is fast becoming one of the most polluting nation , dare I say fast approching China ? Wow, whatever it takes to be number one again.
Zen student
nath
What is happening is not intentionally instead of blaming why not to cooperate and do something for the better...are we all forgotten? Japan helped other countries for their needs before? Now that they are in trouble we are just claiming and blaming bla,,,bla,,bla....
JaneM
Thumbs up for It's ME, Zichi, mekki and everybody who, eventhough they know that not everything is OK, do not contribute to the overexcitement and eventually panic concerning this matter.
yasukuni
"Shikata ga nai" is one of the major factors in the decline of Japan"
Ain't that the truth.
pranavk
Sooner or later this radioactive leakages will affect us, what we eat,drink or breath will be full of radiations. GOD pl. save our generations from these technology and this kind of companies(like TEPCO)
Debbie Itabashi
12 TONS ... Is a lot to me, but combined with everything from the last year plus - how much ocean (and things inside of it) has been effected? How far - in distance before items are safe for consumption? Ok, I feel like I should be freaking out and panicing right now... Yet Im not.
With school and its lunches starting soon.... I not being proficiant in my Jp reading skills, need help with some comprehension. I am sure there are others out there that are like me as well. We are one of those families that are not able to just uproot and move because of a scare.
Food and water, I would like to know what areas are not the good (official and unofficial) places to buy from. I want to feel like I am trying to do my best (under conditions) for my family. Vegitables, grain and such ... Water wise, with this leak combined.... What about the fish, Seaweed, other things we get from the ocean? How far away from Fukushima land and water do we need to look at?
Can anyone point me (and others reading this) in a better direction then just personal assumption?
Btw - I really have learned a lot from the many points of views ... Thank you! That must be partial of the reason why Im not freaking out - like my head tells me that I should be doing.
warnerbro
Water's been leaking into the ground since the first day they managed to put any on the reactors. Probably all of it contains strontium. Speaking of leaks, this article yesterday says the government will soon approve a measure that will allow the debris from inside the 20 km no go zone to be taken outside the zone and burnt or discarded. http://ex-skf.blogspot.jp/2012/04/disaster-debris-inside-no-entry-zone-in.html Perhaps Iwate and Miyagi debris was nothing to worry about, just as supporters of Hosono and gang informed us. Fukushima within the 20 km zone IS something to worry about.
Lynette Kulchinsky
Well, if they are admitting to 12 tons of contaminated water "leaked" into the Sea! So now let us just imagine what the TRUE AMOUNT OF WATER "REALLY" went into the Sea!!!!! They lied about everything else so....