Extremely high radiation levels” to be pouring out at Fukushima

ENENEWS

TV: Officials say “extremely high radiation levels” to be pouring out at Fukushima… “Problem can’t be fundamentally solved” — Gundersen: Plutonium leaking into groundwater, “essentially pieces of nuclear fuel”… “Parts of plant overflowing” after typhoons… “Not a problem that’s going away”

Oct. 27, 2014 (emphasis added): TEPCO says the levels of radioactive cesium in [Fukushima Daiichi's] groundwater… fluctuated greatly last week… TEPCO says these [groundwater] wells are connected underground with other wells that are highly contaminated [and] believes cesium poured into them with this month’s heavy rains andthen flowed out with the underground water. [TEPCO] says this problem cannot be fundamentally solved because the area around the wells thought to be the source of the contamination has extremely high radiation levels and cannot be decontaminated.. The 2 wells are among those from which taintedgroundwater is pumped and discharged into the sea after being decontaminated. But TEPCO has suspended the operation and is considering whether to resume the work.

Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen interviewed by Alex Smith, Oct. 27, 2014 (4:00 in): These typhoons come along and dump 10″ of rain… in a very short time. In addition to the 300 tons [a day] that’s normally leaking, now there’s a lot more. All of the trenches that connect different parts of the plant are now overflowing and leaking into the ground… The plant is continuing to bleed directly into the Pacific, day in and day out. Whenever you get an excessive rainfall, essentially it pops an artery and flows even more 100s of tons into the Pacific. It’s not a problem that’s going to go away… Fukushima is so radioactive; no one has gotten near [the reactor cores] yet. We don’t even know where the nuclear reactor core is — let alone try and stop it leaking into the groundwater. It’s a real mess…. It’s not just cesium, cesium is bad enough… but because the nuclear cores melted down, what we’ve got now is strontium, which is a really bad chemical — it’s a bone seeker that causes all sorts of cancers — but also plutonium. The nuclear reactor has breached and we’re getting plutonium in the groundwater… essentially pieces of the nuclear fuel… the reactor has been breached and the reactor containment has been breached. Most of that breach is in the form of liquid radiation leaking out…