Heavy rains from typhoon Wipha appear to have dramatically raised radiation levels at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant. Radioactive strontium, measuring 1,400 becquerels per liter, has been detected in a drainage ditch leading into the sea. This is 70 times higher than was recorded in the same location just a few days earlier. It is […]
Can the Lowly Muon Save Japan?
One of the biggest hurdles facing cleanup personnel at the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi plant is that much of what is actually happening inside the plant at this time is purely speculation. It’s too dangerous to go inside in person, too risky to send in a camera, and there’s not enough data to produce a valid […]
Fukushima plant water purifier restarted
After several glitches, the water purification system at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant is running again. However all may still not be well. As The New Zealand Herald writes: ” TEPCO [Tokyo Electric Power Co.] is struggling to handle the huge — and growing — volume of contaminated water….Thousands of gallons of contaminated water are […]
Plan to freeze contaminated water has failed
The most recent plan to deal with the contaminated water under the damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant involves freezing this water and erecting an ice-and-soil wall around it to stop the radioactive water from leaking into the sea. While the ice wall may very well work, there’s one small problem: the contaminated water refuses to […]
Kurion Awarded Contract to Treat Fukushima Tank Water
Japanese power company TEPCO has awarded Kurion, an American hazardous waste mitigation company, a contract to filter dangerous Stontium-90 from over 400,000 metric tons of water in tanks at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant before releasing it into the sea. Kurion’s mobile truck-mounted water filtration system will be working in tandem with Toshiba Corp’s trouble-fraught […]