Oregon residents anticipating radiation from Fukushima probe Pacific coast water

Greetings,

Oregon residents anticipating radiation from Fukushima probe Pacific coast water

© Flickr.com/raneko /cc-by
Three years after strong earthquake hit Japan making radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant to enter the Pacific Ocean, American environmentalists from the Pacific coast express concern. Indication of radiation contamination was expected to reach the US’ west coast by this time.

Some experts believe that the amounts of radiation are so insufficient that it would unlikely have impact on human heath or the environment.
Nevertheless, some are still concerned that the tainted ocean water may not be so harmless, so they are probing the water to make sure it is safe.
A national project dedicated to conservation of estuaries and watersheds in western Oregon, is collecting samples of water from the Pacific Ocean to test it for radiation.
Another group, a citizen-science project, is also testing waters along the Oregon coast.
According to the owner of the construction company in Brandon, Oregon, the people are worried about radiation affecting the fisheries, the wildlife, the tourism and especially the people’s heath.

Radioactive elements from Fukushima-1 can get into deep layers of groundwater – TV
TEPCO, the operator company of the crippled Fukushima-1 NPP in the North-East of Japan, has stated that the liquid with a high content of radioactive substances could get into deep layers of the groundwater, the NHK TV channel reports.
The deep layers of the groundwater lie at a distance of about 25 meters from the soil surface. After the level of tritium in one of the technical wells near the first unit of the station reached 4.7 thousand becquerels per liter, experts suspected radioactive contamination of the deep waters. Experts do not exclude that transfer of the radioactive water into the deep layers is connected with the decrease of pressure in them. According to experts, drilling works carried out in the territory of the station during the experiment on freezing the radioactive water could lead to this. It is also not excluded that a liquid with a high content of radioactive elements can leak into the sea.
Since this April, TEPCO launched an experiment on freezing 11 thousand tons of radioactive water that had accumulated in underground tunnels of the station in order to prevent its infiltration into the soil and further transfer into the sea. For this purpose the company installed vertical pipes with freezing agent in the tunnels of two units of the station. Ice wall of radioactive water formed from freezing had to create a barrier for the leakage of this water. However, due to constructional features of the tunnels, it is impossible to freeze part of the water.
The problem of accumulating radioactive water remains one of the unresolved problems of the Fukusima-1. The underground rooms and tanks have accumulated about 440 thousand tons of water with high level of radiation. The volume of the polluted water under the earth grows daily by 400 tons owing to groundwater coming from the upland.
The catastrophe at the Fukushima-1 – the largest in the last 25 years after the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant – occurred after the severest earthquake in the Northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011. Earthquake shocks of magnitude 9.0 were followed by a 14-meter tsunami wave on the coast that flooded four out of six nuclear reactors and broke the cooling system of the reactors, which led to a series of explosions of hydrogen and melting of the active zone.

Source: TVOR

Social

Oregon residents anticipating radiation from Fukushima probe Pacific coast water