Company Is Scolded for Mistakes at Fukushima

Companies need to be honest with both their and employees and the public about safety issues. The age of conspiracy one would think is long passed. This post is shared from the NY Times and highlights the failings of corporate transparency. In an unusually public scolding, Japan’s nuclear watchdog agency criticized the operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant on Friday for making mistakes that allowed radioactive water to leak into the Pacific Ocean, and ordered it to fix the problems quickly. The agency, the Nuclear Regulation Authority, summoned the president of the operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, to explain the accidents and spills that have plagued the cleanup of the Fukushima Daiichi plant since it suffered a triple meltdown two years ago. In the most recent mishap, workers spilled 114 gallons of contaminated water this week while trying to fill an already overflowing tank, said the company, known as Tepco. It said some of the water might have run into the ocean. In a public hearing, an official at the regulatory agency, Katsuhiko Ikeda, dressed down Tepco’s president, saying the problems raised serious questions about the company’s ability to operate its other nuclear plants, like the huge Kashiwazaki-Kariwa facility, which Tepco wants to restart. “That these leaks occurred due to human error is very regrettable,” Mr. Ikeda told the president, Naomi Hirose. “The failure to make rudimentary checks reflects a clear deterioration in the ability to manage the site.” Mr. Ikeda said Tepco should consider emergency measures like bringing in workers from its other nuclear plants to help improve the cleanup. Such blunt and direct...

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Worker error causes Fukushima leak

Today's post from the BBC.

This aerial photo shows the storage tank, fifth from left at left plot, which was found to be overflowing, at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant at Okuma town in Fukushima prefecture,...

Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has a new leak of radioactive water after workers overfilled a storage tank, its operator says.

The workers miscalculated the tank's capacity as it was tilted on unlevel ground, plant operator Tepco said.

It said around 430 litres (100 gallons) of water may have leaked from the tank, and could have flowed into the sea.

The plant has experienced several leaks since being crippled by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

One of the largest leaks took place in August, when Tepco discovered a leak of at least 300 tonnes of highly radioactive water at a different part of the plant.

The latest leak was discovered by workers late on Wednesday.

Tepco official Masayuki Ono said: "We would like to apologise that we have to announce that we've had another leak in our tanks today."

"This is partly because we've had to fill our tanks to the brim in order to deal with the difficult management of rain water overflow following [a typhoon]," he added.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said that Tepco had failed to deal with the leaks successfully.

"It's actually leaking so of course we can't say that [Tepco] have been properly dealing with the issue. It should not be leaking at all," he said.

The 2011 disaster knocked out cooling systems to the nuclear plant's reactors, three of which melted down.

Water is now being pumped in to cool the reactors, but storing the resultant large quantities of radioactive water has proved a...


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Fukushima radiation levels spike, company says

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from www.cnn.com

There's been a sharp spike in radiation levels measured in the pipes and containers holding water at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan. But the company in charge of cleaning it up says that only a single drop of the highly contaminated water escaped the holding tanks. Tokyo Electric Power Company said it is confident it can provide safety for workers dealing with the problem. "We will find out the cause of this issue and make proper counter measures immediately, and continue to make every effort to secure safety of workers," the company said in a statement released Sunday. TEPCO found high radiation readings at the contaminated water storage tanks and pipe Saturday. The four locations are the bottom of three tanks and a pipe connecting tanks in separate area. The highest reading as 1800 millisieverts per hour at the bottom fringe of the tank. 220 and 70 mSv were measured at the bottom of other two tanks. And TEPCO said they found a dried stain under the pipe with 230 mSv/h radiation measurement. One drop of liquid fell when a staff member pressed on insulation material around the pipe. But TEPCO said no contaminated water leak is expected as there were no change in the water level in tanks. The enormous tanks are identical to the container that was announced last week to have leaked 300 tons of highly toxic water and sparking a hike to the threat level to "serious." TEPCO will investigate the cause and look further if there were any...

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Radiation Near Japanese Plant’s Tanks Suggests New Leaks

Today's post was shared by The New York Times and comes from www.nytimes.com

A crisis over contaminated water at Japan’s stricken nuclear plant worsened on Saturday when the plant’s operator said it had detected high radiation levels near storage tanks, a finding that raised the possibility of additional leaks. The operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, said it had found the high levels of radiation at four separate spots on the ground, near some of the hundreds of tanks used to store toxic water produced by makeshift efforts to cool the Fukushima Daiichi plant’s three damaged reactors. The highest reading was 1,800 millisieverts per hour, or enough to give a lethal dose in about four hours, Tepco said.