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TEPCO discovers pipe leaking radioactive water at Fukushima plant

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I fear for the TEPCO workers....

8 ( +8 / -0 )

Chewing gum and duct tape. That outta do it.

Can you imagine how well all those flanged connections and redneck-rigged pipes are going to hold up when another strong quake hits?

Sigh.

6 ( +6 / -0 )

the company said the first measurement was done with equipment that could only reach up to 100 millisieverts

A Comedy of Errors

6 ( +7 / -1 )

Reports and updates seem to be arriving with more regularity - still too late to renew any confidence in "INEPTCO".

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Hot glue and duct tape!!! This is actually a very accurate mirror to TEPCO's response to this crises from the very beginning!!! If there was a BAND AID that could be wrapped around the reactor they would have tried it, to save money!!!

7 ( +7 / -0 )

The Nightmare continues...........

5 ( +5 / -0 )

It's just one thing after another!

TEPCO should not be in charge of this. They have a proven track record of incompetence. The government should take full control and ask for help from overseas.

7 ( +8 / -1 )

So, by TEPCO logic, if your car speedometer only goes up to 50 km/h you can never really be caught for speeding??

8 ( +9 / -1 )

One drop every 90 seconds........Headline News??

You have to expect each and every one of those tanks are at least seeping that small amount.

-3 ( +2 / -5 )

the company said the first measurement was done with equipment that could only reach up to 100 millisieverts

A Comedy of Errors

No not an error at all - they knew exactly what they were dooming it was us that didn't. Then after everyone is sick and dying, then, they say, 'ohhhh sumimasen' we are very sorry but our equipment only measured to 100 but don't worry about it now we have...... Over and over and over - phycology. Release the information slowly to the populace and then only if you have too. So no panic and people work on and slowly forget about it and is becomes normal so loses interest for the average person..... Won't be for 10 years or so that cancer rates and other sicknesses will begin to show

0 ( +2 / -2 )

Let me get this right: Tepco got a reading from a gauge that could only go to 100 milliseverts and it registered the highest level possible. Then Tepco did nothing for a number of days. Then they checked again with a different gauge and it registered 1800 milliseverts. And Tepco says there is no reason to worry. It is time the senior managers at Tepco made themselves available to do the blue collar work at Fukashima and we can see if they are as unworried about themselves getting a lethal radiation dose as they seem to be about the workers at the site.

I would suggest it is time to send in the clowns, but they are already there running Tepco. And the Japanese government is the clown master. Watch what happens when the Abe gov gets involved. More coverup and more incompetence.

So what is planned about the roughly 90 tons of nuclear material that has penetrated the earth and is, therefore, not contained.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

Workers tightened 12 bolts to stop the leak and bolstered the repair using special material and plastic tape.

This 'special material' wouldn't be kaminendo, would it, by any chance?

Kaminendo and sellotape. Well, that just about sums it up. It's too surreal to be true any more.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

What a bunch of useless morons. They're worse than a Yugo car that goes from 0 to 60 in four days. (referring to TEPCO and not the workers).

1 ( +3 / -2 )

Finding more problems and never giving us any solutions or even ideas of how they are going to contain this. I wish Japan would just put away its pride and ask for help, because it is becoming more and more apparent everyday that they cannot fix this problem on their own.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Yeap. tightening the bolts & tape would certainly help..

1 ( +1 / -0 )

I hope this news goes over to the Olympic committee as they vote for the host city of the 2020 Olympics.

4 ( +5 / -1 )

So 1800mSv would kill someone in 4 hours - but I assume they have workers walking around the area and checking other things in the mean time before finding this reading. No one dead yet?

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

Idiots, now what the hell you going to do with that water?

4 ( +4 / -0 )

'' discovers'' yeah right!

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Sigh... and all the money behind nuclear plant projects. Have you heard that even France that is supposed to be renowned for nuclear power technology had in the past are having problems.

I am sure someone in this audience reading, would at one time in their work, be required to make a decision based on risk or profit. Risk is one thing but the severity of the consequence can never be override by a low possibility of occurrence. Because probability changes very quickly with time. Severity of consequence of a failure is often difficult to alter just as in nuclear meltdown and leakage.

No one wants to take in the nuclear waste water.

quote London (Platts)--28Aug2013/833 am EDT/1233 GMT

The dangers presented by fires at French nuclear power stations must be "taken very seriously" after a report showed there were around 100 fire incidents at nuclear sites in 2011, Jean-Christophe Niel, managing director of national nuclear safety regulator ASN, said in an interview published Wednesday.

Earlier this month, ASN published a report which said that around 40% of the 100 fire incidents reported in 2011 at French nuclear sites -- which includes power plants as well as fuel reprocessing and research sites -- were caused by electrical faults.

"Out of the hundred fire incidents in 2011, around 10 were considered significant in terms of nuclear safety," Jean-Christophe Niel told Le Parisien newspaper in an interview.

State-controlled power firm EDF operates all 58 of France's nuclear power reactors, which typically provide around three-quarters of the nation's power. unquote

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Incoming Breaking news! Tepco Finds a pipe that is not leaking!

5 ( +5 / -0 )

So 1800mSv would kill someone in 4 hours - but I assume they have workers walking around the area and checking other things in the mean time before finding this reading. No one dead yet?

No one dead yet. Say what you will about TEPCO workers, but they're at least smart enough to know not to lie stark naked and motionless in a puddle of contaminated water for 4 hours.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

gogogo at Sep. 02, 2013 - 09:00AM JST Idiots, now what the hell you going to do with that water?

Exactly and where is it stored at present? That's right - right there where another earthquake could take care of it for them. Boom back in the sea - same as minamta. Mercury dumped into the ocean as they say the ocean is big enough to hide it all... And we won't drop dead for a few years and they will say it is a coincidence

2 ( +2 / -0 )

So they measure the radiation and it's off the scale, but it takes them a week to get around to measuring it correctly?

A TEPCO spokesman said the radiation of 1,800 millisieverts was largely beta ray with weak penetration force, which workers can easily block by wearing protection jackets

Beta rays can be stopped by about 1 mm of aluminium. The "protective jackets" shown in the picture, above, appear to be the kind of thin, vinyl things we wear in clean rooms. Do they really protect against beta radiation?

0 ( +1 / -1 )

No one dead yet

As far as we know...

4 ( +4 / -0 )

Beta rays can be stopped by about 1 mm of aluminium. The "protective jackets" shown in the picture, above, appear to be the kind of thin, vinyl things we wear in clean rooms. Do they really protect against beta radiation?

Lower density materials provide better shielding against beta radiation. PVC is less dense than aluminium. Thickness doesn't really enter into the equation.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

They seem to have even ceased trying to even look in control. A new exodus is on the cards...anyone know where Ozawa San is?

1 ( +2 / -1 )

I hope this news goes over to the Olympic committee as they vote for the host city of the 2020 Olympics

Inose and Abe have assured everyone that it will not affect Tokyo's bid. So there!

3 ( +4 / -1 )

I emailed this news story to the International Olympic Committee

4 ( +6 / -2 )

They fixed it with gum and tape - they did a MacGyver!!

2 ( +2 / -0 )

There was water on the bathroom floor at my office toilet and I toolk an alligator wrench and tightened the flange comnectiion. No radiation was detected.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

I remember posting here saying that Fukushima was potentially worse than Chernobyl.

Now we can all see that it has the potential to be much worse......

-1 ( +2 / -3 )

Japanese people, why are you not furious, these people are destroying your country and your reputation.

This disaster is and has always been out of control and far outside of the capabilities of a private organisation, one that is determined at the detriment of us all to make this seem as trivial as possible.

I don't pretend that this is an easy problem at all, but the incompetence and lies in something so important simply can't continued to be ignored.

2 ( +4 / -2 )

It might be only one thing... The nightmare might grow bad from now. Ash area would be wider until no one live in several square meters.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

I feel so sorry for the Japanese people. I feel like they were betrayed by the people that are supposed to protect them.As soon as we can eliminate these people with this "i don't care" what happens to you mindset , the better off the people of the world will be.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

These leaks are like speeding tickets. For ever ticket given out, there's another 1000 speeders that you don't know about.

Or like someone said about government officials being like cockroaches:

You see one, that means there's thousands you can't see.

Great, now I'm going to have nightmares about radioactive speeding cockroaches...

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Tightening 12 bolts is for tightenining coupling flanges, if they did that it means that the seal failed and because its water the special material is simply red rubber, the plastic tape(duct tape teflon) was surely used elsewhere.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

I heard that the vendor supplying the holding tanks were of a cheaper type as TEPCO chose to go with lower quality do to pricing. This is a crime, TEPCO should not be making any more decisions and the government needs to step up their game and treat this situation seriously.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

"though the company said the first measurement was done with equipment that could only reach up to 100 millisieverts."

Alright, so we have a nuclear operator that doesn't have the equipment that reads above 100 millisieverts. Ok so we are already starting to scratch our heads. But it doesn't even have the equipment after four reactors blew up. From this, s simple question arises. Shall we laugh or cry now?

And by the way, just say 1.8 sieverts/hour, saying 1800 millisieverts/hour doesn't make that much sense.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

hokkaidoguy: It depends on the energy of the beta particles doesn't it. Tepco claim they have "weak penetration force", but don't give the energy. Maybe that was also off the scale of their instruments? Or they are just telling lies, as usual.

Beta particles with 1 MeV energy will penetrate 4 mm of water (and a similar distance in plastic). Particles with that much energy will pass through those flimsy vinyl coats shown in the picture.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Using 'special material and plastic tape'. Hope the ¥100 shop has enough in stock or we could be in real trouble.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Gogogo

I emailed this news story to the International Olympic Committee

That is a very good idea! What is the email address? I will do same thing! Absoluteley, Japan is not safe zone for Olypmic.

-4 ( +0 / -4 )

This just reminds me so much of Monty Burns' Nuclear Power Plant in Springfield.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

WoW, Discovery Of The Millennium !!! Congratulations !!!

0 ( +0 / -0 )

"Fukushima open air fission? Radiation surge can’t be blamed just on random leaks":

http://rt.com/op-edge/fukushima-radiation-threat-level-288/

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Why build these cheap tanks? It beggars belief that after everything that has happened they are still cutting corners with cheap materials and token foot patrols! They might have needed these tanks to be built fast to begin with, but they should have been building more robust storage facilities to transfer the water to in the meantime. And away from the sea! This is going to end up like an 80s video game with a little man running around plugging leaks while the leaks spring up faster and more frequently as the game progresses. This is reality though, and there is more at stake than a high score!

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Beta particles with 1 MeV energy will penetrate 4 mm of water (and a similar distance in plastic). Particles with that much energy will pass through those flimsy vinyl coats shown in the picture.

Well, you're right on the first point - but that calculation is based on being in actual physical contact with the radioactive material. In this case the beta energy has to deal with the water barrier first, then the air barrier, then the suits.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

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