Fukushima : Nuke Plant Groundwater Contamination: No One Fully Knows Exactly Where Trenches and Ducts Are Located, How They Are Connected

Monday, July 29, 2013

Fukushima : Nuke Plant Groundwater Contamination: No One Fully Knows Exactly Where Trenches and Ducts Are Located, How They Are Connected

EXSKF

Sunday, July 28, 2013

#Fukushima I Nuke Plant Groundwater Contamination: No One Fully Knows Exactly Where Trenches and Ducts Are Located, How They Are Connected

Tokyo Shinbun has a pictorial showing the locations of the known trenches along the seawall.　I think it is more helpful than TEPCO's pictorial, which does not show the embankment which is clearly created artificially. It also nicely summarizes the entire article.
It shows the possibility of seawater and groundwater mixing beneath the sea level. If the highly contaminated water in the trenches from the turbine buildings to the water intake along the embankment bordering the open culvert are leaking somewhere, they will go to the layers of crushed stones underneath the trenches (standard construction method) and leak to the surrounding soil
From Tokyo Shinbun (7/26/2013, English labels are by me):

Tokyo Shinbun's article itself has some misunderstanding:

何より問題なのは、建屋の地下だけで七万五千トンにのぼる高濃度汚染水がトレンチに流れ込んでいることだ。
The biggest problem is that highly contaminated water is flowing into the trenches from the [turbine building] basements which hold 75,000 tonnes of such water.

No it isn't. Tokyo Shinbun doesn't know or forgot to check the density of radioactive materials found this time from the seawater pipe trench for Reactor 2. The density is one order of magnitude GREATER than the density of contaminated water inside the Reactor 2 turbine building, indicating the water in the trench is the same water that leaked into the ocean in April 2011.

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