Nuclear Plant Logs 3rd Radiation Leak (Japan)

NYT ^ | July 19, 2007 | Staff

[Schnucki]

KASHIWAZAKI, Japan, — Troubles at a Japanese nuclear power plant damaged by an earthquake on Monday continued Thursday when the plant’s operator reported that it had detected a third radiation leak.

In a statement, Tokyo Electric Power, the operator, said that it had found tiny amounts of radioactive material in an exhaust filter at the plant, which was shut down Monday during a magnitude-6.8 earthquake near this city in northwestern Japan. The material was detected Wednesday, meaning it might have leaked a day or two after the earthquake, Tokyo Electric said.

[steveyp]

This breathless reporting by the Times is remarkable, and Tokyo Electric isn’t helping. You don’t visually inspect miles of nuclear power plant piping and acres of structures in a day or two. The company isn’t incompetent because within 1 day they didn’t know the full extent of the damage to the station. However, the unit survived the quake, was shutdown and residual heat removal appears to be working well. The plant was designed well and has performed well through the seismic event. There is no immediate danger of a nuclear accident and there is no evidence there was one to begin with.

[mefistofelerevised]

Building nuclear power plants in earthquake prone regions is not a good idea. I’m take coal in my backyard.

[kidd]

Troubles at a Japanese nuclear power plant damaged by an earthquake ...

The NYT has deemed the plant "damaged" after an extremely small spill and an extremely small leak ... without specifying the sources or the amounts.

I thought I read that the source of the spill was a container of low level waste, not from the operating equipment itself. Its entirely possible that the exhaust filter contains airborn particles from the spilled container.

[wolfpat]

Since this plant was a BWR, this low level waste was likely some resins used in cleaning up the reactor water. “Low level” is a reletive term, and waste resins usually have very high dose rates (I’ve measured 50 R/Hr outside the casks).

[kidd]

I work in the nuclear industry, so I am familiar with what is LLW.

My point was that spilled LLW, whatever the source, does not constitute a “damaged” plant. The NYT appears to presume damage either out of ignorance or because they have an agenda.

The Japanese plant operators are typically tight-lipped about the operation of their plants, so I doubt we’ll ever find out the source of the releases.

[wolfpat]

Of course you’re right. A cask tipping over ain’t the same as a reactor coolant leak.

[Dick Bachert]

(Another salvo in the statist war on nuclear power. Translation of that piece from Newspeak follows.)

With the exception of our home-grown One World PROPAGANDA, we, The New World Order cheerleaders at the NY Slimes can’t have an America no longer dependent on foreign sources of virtually everything.

I mean, after all, if America becomes a stand-alone system, how are we ever going to close the deal on all this “interdependence” necessary to weave the world into our sought after utopia where the poverty and tyranny of most of the rest of the world is brought here so that it might be shared equally amongst ALL nations?

You foolish Americans, with your neurotic concerns for such anachronistic ideas as “national sovereignty” simply don’t understand the BIG PICTURE. Think “Divine Right of Kings” here.

It is up to US, your really smart, well-educated betters to manipulate you into abandoning that archaic nonsense.

Trust us.