FROM: LE PROVOCATUR
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TEPCO has also said that the water that contains Strontium-90 is leaking at a rate of 75 gallons per minute. The reactor building that held the reactors is measuring at a 0.9 to 1.8 sieverts per hour, which means the workers are unable to enter the work site.
As of November 8, another reactor, number 4, was being worked on in order to remove highly radioactive rods from the damaged tank. However, the tank of water that the rods are suspended in are above the core and the workers are worried that the tank might collapse due to the damage from the earthquake and tsunami.
Danger is high in the plant, for if one of the rods breaks while they are trying to move them, large amounts of radioactive gas could be released in the air. It was estimated that it would take the workers about a year to fully dismantle the reactor.
The workers are also faced with the daunting task of removing the 1,331 used radiated fuel assemblies that are packed rather tightly together, and another 202 unused assemblies which are all being stored in reactor number 4’s cooling pool. The assemblies that they are trying to remove contain plutonium, one of the most toxic substances known.
“They must be handled one by one, very carefully,” said Shunichi Tanaka, Chairman of Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority. A team of workers has to put the fuel assemblies in a chamber, which blocks the radiation, and then the assemblies have to be lifted from the cooling area and brought to a cooling pool which is in an undamaged building about 100 meters away. TEPCO estimated that this would take about two years to accomplish, but soon realized the urgency and cut the time down.
According to NBC News, Fukushima’s contaminated waters are likely to reach the United States West Coast soil by early 2014 and will be at its peak in 2016.
(FULL ARTICLE---LINK)
Modern industrial society is a fanatical religion. We are demolishing, poisoning, destroying all life-systems on the planet. We are signing IOUs our children will not be able to pay...We are acting as if we were the last generation on the planet. Without a radical change in heart, in mind, in vision, the earth will end up like Venus, charred and dead. – Jose Antonio Lutzenberger, Brazilian Minister for the Environment
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