Controlling Wasted Water

Suffering from frequent floods by ample rainfall and fast stream of rivers, the ancient Japanese left a saying; “Controlling water is controlling a country.” Now we are seeing a new type of importance of controlling water, which is how to store contaminated water used for cooling the broken reactors in First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. On Saturday, it was reported that the biggest leakage from the bottom of the pool for contaminated water was confirmed. A spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Company emphasized that the leaked water had never flown into the seawater without any persuasive evidence.

The amount of leaked contaminated water was 120 metric tons that contained 710 billion becqrerels of radioactive materials. The leakage occurred through a hole or seam of three-layered waterproof sheets in the bottom of the pool, which had stored 13 thousand metric tons of water. TEPCO tried to explain the reason of the leakage as “some malfunction or unexpected event,” obviously not an explanation at all. TEPCO started transferring the water to another pool, the process that takes about five days.

“Although there is no possibility that the water has flown into the sea, we apologize about making people worried,” told the spokesman raising facts that the pool was located in 35 meters higher than seawater level and 800 meters distant from coastline. Everybody knows that water flows from the high to the low, and river or its undercurrent ultimately goes into the sea. Comments of TEPCO always make people worried.

It is possible that this kind of leakage may happen again and again, as long as TEPCO keeps on controlling the water in such a primitive way as digging big hole in the soil, laying unreliable sheet and pouring contaminated water in it. To deal with the water increasing by 400 metric tons everyday, that amounts to 370 thousand metric tons so far, the company has a plan to build a capability for 700 thousand metric tons by the end of 2015. To implement that, TEPCO is cutting trees in forest around the nuclear plant to reserve enough land for building new pools.

Here are the lessons. First, as well as we could not control radioactive materials in the power plant, we cannot control contaminated water produced by recovering process of the accident. Second, once a nuclear power plant was broken, we will be forced to make endless efforts to avoid affections on human beings. Third, a man who wants to be more responsible for himself or his colleagues than for fellow citizens keeps on lying shamelessly.