Tokyo Electric Power Company started running contaminated
water, after getting through purification process, into Pacific Ocean from
broken First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant on Monday. While contaminated
materials had been flowing out with uncontrollable underground stream around
the plant, TEPCO for the first time began to pour contaminated water, knowing
it would not be completely purified. It is hard to understand that the world
ignores this unprecedented type of water pollution.
TEPCO calls it “sub-drain project.” The plant has been
equipped with a number of wells, called sub-drain, for controlling underground
water approaching to the building. New plan was to draw water from sub-drain
and pouring it to the sea after removing radioactive materials. If it were
successful, TEPCO expects that it can reduce underground stream getting into
the plant, mostly three hundred metric tons, by half.
The company has, however, been failing in controlling
underground water. TEPCO once started bypassing underground water before it
came around the plant last year. But, it turned to be unable to reduce the
water flowing into the plant. Experts of TEPCO could not understand how
underground water was coming through. As its result, seven hundred thousand
metric tons of contaminated water is contained in one thousand tanks built
around the plant.
So, next measure was to draw the water from underground
right beneath the plant. TEPCO and third party supervisors would measure
radioactive level of the water and announce it before flowing to the sea.
Although that water would be going through purification system, called ALPS, it
is already known that tritium would not be removed. There will be hundreds of
thousands becquerels of tritium remaining in one litter of “purified” water.
The most worried are fishermen working around the plant.
Although they were strongly against the project, they finally agreed on it,
believing a story presented by TEPCO that the water would be completely blocked
with new system. But, the fishery around the plant has been fatally damaged
with unprecedented level of nuclear accident in the plant. There is no
guarantee for them that it will turn to a normal.
The point is whether a power company can control great eco
system with artificial equipments invented with various ideas stemming from one
purpose of rebuilding nuclear business. A story to block vast underground water
by ice wall built in the land with depth of only tens of meters sounds like
myth or religion. The world is too busy in discussing serious problem of Syrian
refugees to notice unfairness of pouring nuclear materials into Pacific Ocean.
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