New Radioactive Water Leak At Fukushima: 300 Tons and Growing

AmiMoJo tips this news from the BBC: "Radioactive water has leaked from a storage tank into the ground at Japan's Fukushima plant, operator TEPCO says. Officials described the leak as a level-one incident — the lowest level — on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES), which measures nuclear events. This is the first time that Japan has declared such an event since the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. A puddle of the contaminated water was emitting 100 millisieverts an hour of radiation, equivalent to five year's maximum exposure for a site worker. In addition up to 300 tonnes a day of contaminated water is leaking from reactors buildings into the sea." There was a significant leak back in April as well.

Radioactive ooze!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's florescent fucking green! Do you know what that means?! It means it's toxic radioactive ooze!! Fucking OOZE!

Not nearly as reactive as this FUD however.

Good News!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

TEPCO is pleased to announce that additional capacity has become available in one of the radioactive coolant storage tanks, a development certain to ease fears of a capacity shortage.

Re:Radioactive ooze!

[noh8rz10]

Officials described the leak as a level-one incident — the lowest level — on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES)

first, i'd like to point out that the lowest level for nuclear leaks is LEVEL 0 - NO FREAKING LEAK.

Second, to the parent post - heroes in a half shell. turtle power!

Re:Radioactive ooze!

[binarylarry]

Well hey on the bright side the turtles won't have to go far to find a ninja master!

Not reassuring, actually

[Camael]

Officials described the leak as a level-one incident — the lowest level — on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES)

The fact that its reported as a Level 1 incident is not reassuring, actually.

The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) seems to be highly subjective [wikipedia.org] :-

As INES ratings are not assigned by a central body, high-profile nuclear incidents are sometimes assigned INES ratings by the operator, by the formal body of the country, but also by scientific institutes, international authorities or other experts which may lead to confusion as to the actual severity.

And also, under Criticisms :-

Deficiencies in the existing INES have emerged through comparisons between the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. Firstly, the scale is essentially a discrete qualitative ranking, not defined beyond event level 7. Secondly, it was designed as a public relations tool, not an objective scientific scale. Thirdly, its most serious shortcoming is that it conflates magnitude with intensity.