Three Hundred Metric Tons a Day

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry announced that the quantity of contaminated ground water flowing through the First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant would amount three hundred metric tons a day. If Americans think this phenomenon as something happening on the far opposite side of the Pacific Ocean and nothing to do with them, it’s too optimistic. Remember a lot of debris arrived on the west coast of the United States several months after the East Japan Great Earthquake. Sea current circulating the ocean carries everything, including biologically harmful radioactive materials.

In the area around the plant, one thousand tons of water flow into the sea every day. Four hundred tons of water out of that go into the facilities and gets contaminated, a part of which has been retrieved and stocked in the tanks. So, where does the rest of six hundred tons of water go? All of them went to the sea, the half of which, three hundred tons, had been contaminated and the rest not. Next question should be when did the leak started? The answer of METI was that might be right after the accident in March, 2011. In short, radioactive materials may have been flowing into the Pacific Ocean for two and half years. It’s awesome.

That is the estimation of the Agency of Resource and Energy in METI. Who is responsible for controlling the plant and cooling water for broken reactors? It is TEPCO. The answer of TEPCO about how much water had been flown into the sea was “We don’t know exactly.” To the question about the possibility of spreading to the outer sea, “We think the water has been staying inside the port of the facility” they told without any effective evidence.

Total amount of the flow of the contaminated water can be paralleled with the worst tanker accident. The period for reduction of Cesium 137 by half is thirty years. Radioactive materials are invisible. It is unclear whether contaminated water would be diluted or carried as certain amount of concentration. We need to take this phenomenon as a serious seawater pollution.

The scheme for post-accident recovery proved to be failed. TEPCO’s incompetency is apparent. However, the scheme was basically aimed for saving TEPCO as a business entity, chosen by the government. The government of Japan belatedly decided to inject tax money to stop the leak into the sea. If it wants to make things straight, TEPCO needs to be dealt as bankrupted and rebuild the process from the starting point.