Unprecedented Water Pollution

Highly-radioactive contaminated water has been leaked to the Pacific Ocean for two years. According to the reports of newspapers, Tokyo Electric Power Company admitted that it took no effort to stop leaking contaminated water from broken First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant to the sea. From the beginning, how to deal with the water used for cooling nuclear fuel has been the focus for avoiding environmentally negative impact. TEPCO has possibly kept it leaking on its watch. It is close to a mystery how and why this irresponsible business entity still exist, and even looking to survive with resumption of nuclear plants.

There are a long and complicated tunnel system around the reactors underground of the First Fukushima site, which had been used for electric cable and other purposes. After the accident two yeas ago, there found a major leakage of contaminated water to the sea through that tunnels. Although TEPCO shut the exit of the tunnels, there was a hole at the junction between the building and tunnel. Water has been leaked through the hole for two years, without any effort to fix the hole.

What do we know, now? TEPCO observed polluted water in the tunnel with 2.35 billion becquerels of radioactive cesium per litter, 750 million of strontium and its akin, and 8.7 million of tritium. The tunnel system still holds over 15 thousand metric tons of polluted water. It is highly possible that the water leaked to the sea through underground water system.

There are a lot of things we don’t know. Firstly, how much radioactive materials have been emitted to the sea? The amount of radioactive materials TEPCO confirmed was contained in one litter of water. If whole 15 thousand tons of water in the tunnel system was equally polluted, nearly 35 quadrillion becquerels of radioactive cesium might have been contained in the water filling the tunnel. But, the calculation stops here, because the water has supposedly been replaced by new contaminated water to compensate the leakage.

Secondly, whether has TEPCO known it? The company actually made tentative repairs to shut the leakage up two years ago. But, it is not clear whether they had kept on watching the situation of the tunnels. They might have left it alone in don’t-ask-don’t-tell way. If that doubt is baseless, they need to explain. TEPCO cannot escape from the responsibility of this unprecedented seawater pollution, anyway. It is also the responsibility of the government of Japan to allow the company doing that omission of necessary measures, and to let it continue to be a business company that seeks profit.