Here’s the latest of our news bulletins from the ongoing crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
State of the Fukushima Reactors
TEPCO, the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, has said that the highly radioactive water leaking into the basement of the reactor #3 building is likely to be coming from a hole in the reactor’s primary containment vessel. The leak was discovered by a robot sent in by workers as the radiation levels are still too high for humans to enter the building.
Video of leak can be seen here. According to Nuclear Engineering International:
A sample of the water showed contamination levels of 24,000 Bq/cm3 of all beta radiation, 1700 Bq/cm3 of caesium-137, 700 Bq/cm3 of caesium-134 and 25 Bq/cm3 of cobalt-60.
TEPCO is conducting investigations but is not able to say how long the leak has been happening and how much water has escaped.
Meanwhile, researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University and High Energy Accelerator Research Organization have developed a way of taking images of the melted nuclear fuel inside the damaged Fukushima reactors using cosmic rays. The team successfully tested the system at the idle Tokai nuclear power plant. The system uses elementary particles called muons which change behavior when in contact with nuclear fuel. “The (cosmic ray) measurement system can be installed easily. We are ready to use it at the Fukushima No. 1 plant if Tepco cooperates,” Hidekazu Kakuno, an associate professor from TokyoMetropolitanUniversity.
The work continues to remove nuclear fuel from the storage pool in the unstable reactor #4 building and place it in a more secure location. As of January 27, 220 of the 1,533 fuel assembles have been transferred.
TEPCO
In October 2011 TEPCO began demanding its workers who had been evacuated because of the nuclear disaster suspend their claims for compensation, an investigation by Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun newspaper has found. The sheer number of applications from the other victims of the crisis was the reason given. In spring 2013 the newspaper discovered the company was demanding any compensation already paid to its workers be refunded. Workers who have been transferred by TEPCO to posts away from home or have left Fukushima are also being denied compensation. "If this life we're leading now isn't a refugee existence, then what is it?" said one employee.
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