[Column] Why is contaminated water issue important ?

Fukushima Diary has been featuring the contaminated water issue since last summer and it’s been killing the web traffic of this site. Lol
However I cannot miss this issue. I’ll show you the three reasons before the pizza is delivered.

1, It increases the radiation dose of the plant area so that almost nobody can work.

The groundwater is also contaminated and it’s rising to near the surface of the ground. Tepco built the underground wall along the coastal line but it pushes the groundwater back to the land side. In some part of the seaside, workers already can’t work without the “stand” so that they don’t have to directly stand on the ground. And they also put the lead plate over the “stand”.
Also, the contaminated water tanks are extremely radioactive too. The radioactive material is packed in the tank, but when it hits water and steel, it turns to Bremsstrahlung. Workers are shot by bremsstrahlung even when they are just patrolling to find leakage.

2, The buoyancy damages the reactor buildings.

As I wrote above, the rising contaminated water harms the soundness of plant buildings. Fukushima plant is built on the artificially improved ground beside the sea. Considering it went under the earthquake and tsunami, it’s likely that the rising groundwater may be the last straw. If the reactor buildings fall down, the crippled reactors will no longer be cooled and 311 would be repeated.

3, It flows to the sea.

The final destination of the contaminated is the pacific. Now Tepco is building the underground wall along the coastal line, but the water is swerving the wall to reach the sea. Sea contamination level stays extremely high since last June. Additionally, Tepco has been concealing the significant data until IOC selects Tokyo as the host city of Olympic Games in 2020. (I’m sure it wasn’t on purpose. ) It shows high level of strontium 90 has been measured from the port seawater since last summer. Strontium 90 is known to cause leukemia.
Currently they stock 400,000 tonnes of contaminated water but they will end up discharging it to the pacific as IAEI recommends. The new type of the purification equipment has never been in the operation since early 2013. Even if it gets in the full operation, the unfilterable material remains. Tepco would keep discharging the water for the coming 60 years at the maximum level within the “safety limit”.

I was brought up with sushi. Most likely sushi will be safe in the sea around Japan. And the river will run up the mountain, sun will rise from the west.