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Fukushima Daiichi ‘s Port has Record Levels of Radiation

Record levels of radioactivity in plant’s port http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/nuclear.html  May 30, 2015  The operator of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant says it has found record-high levels of radioactive water in the facility’s port. It says the high levels are due to a leak of wastewater. Tokyo Electric Power Company officials said on Friday that contaminated water leaked from a crack in a hose connecting a wastewater tank to a building at the plant.

They later detected about 22,000 becquerels of beta ray-emitting substances per liter of water in a nearby drainage ditch. The ditch is in the upper part of a drainage channel. The utility also found the density of radioactive materials in the channel was around 6,600 becquerels per liter. That’s more than 200 times higher than the figure recorded on Wednesday.

TEPCO officials took samples of seawater from 4 locations in the port, where the leaked water reached via the drainage channel. They detected between 190 and 320 becquerels of radioactive substances per liter. The figure is the highest ever recorded in the port.

Utility officials say the leak stopped after they halted the flow of water, and that it has not affected waters in the Pacific Ocean outside the port. TEPCO workers are trying to collect water from the drainage channel to prevent it from reaching the ocean.

June 1, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Fukushima 2015