TEPCO says 67,500 tons of contaminated water are now in the No. 1, 2 and 3 reactors

[flamingdem]

http://falloutphilippines.blogspot.com/

Just another typical day in Dai-ichi - Head-scratching, uncertainty predominate
Just in time to offset the Tepco Execs 'cold shutdown in 6 months' drivel, it was recently discovered that the water level in a tunnel linked to the Number 3 reactor has been rising several centimeters a day for the past week. The water is expected to rise to about one meter below the ground level soon. It works out great. At that rate, the highly radioactive water should completely fill the basement and reach ground level at about the same time as cold shutdown.

NOTE: This is a blog written by a medical dosimitrist from the USA living in the Phillipines, updated often

Perhaps Tepco has a problem grasping the law of conservation of matter. Water goes in, water must come out. For how long now; massive, drought-inducing, crop-shriveling amounts have been pumped into reactors with known leaks. Tepco has to expect water to pop up at different locations, however remote that possibility may appear (see next paragraph), but they always seem surprised when it happens.

Tepco is also confirming that radioactive water levels are also rising - if you can believe it - in the Number 5 and 6 turbine buildings. Also, TEPCO says an estimated 67,500 tons of contaminated water are now in the Number 1, 2 and 3 reactors alone, "hampering efforts to restore the reactors' cooling systems".

In a stroke of luck, workers entering the unit 2 building for the first time since the explosion discovered lower amounts of radiation than expected, at 10 to 50 milliSieverts/hr. This will enable each worker to spend 20 minutes a day instead of just 10 minutes a day in the unit. What they will be able to accomplish in that greatly expanded time frame is hard to say - maybe installation of some air purification system that reduces radiation by 96%, but in actuality, only reduces it 5-10%.

And no wonder they've been putting cows down outside the exclusion zone. It's in the grass - 1,530 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram were found in a sample collected last Wednesday from a farm in southern town of Marumori in Miyagi Prefecture. That is 5 times the legal limit of 300 becquerels.
350 becquerels of cesium were also detected in a sample from a prefectural farm in the northern city of Osaki.

[damntexdem]

1. And how much more has leaked out?

[FBaggins]

2. Should be more than that.

Wasn't it estimated at ~65k tons back when they first discovered it and were trying to plug the first leak into that pit?

Maybe they're pumping out roughly the same amount that they're pumping in?

In a stroke of luck, workers entering the unit 2 building for the first time since the explosion discovered lower amounts of radiation than expected,

Ongoing surprises with this one. Many of us have assumed that this unit is the most damaged of the lot.

[Someguyinjapan]

3. Based on what's happened, no one should be assuming anything at this point.

Least of all someone who lives half a world away, can't speak Japanese and has the same limited information to work with as everyone else.

It roils my innards with contempt when you issue comments with the tone of a high school student studying the results of a science experiment, Baggins. Not that a lot of what you say carries any credibilty anyway due to your systemic inability to recognize major flaws with a lot of the source material you base your assumptions on, but if you could do so with less of the "schoolboy on Chrstmas Eve" breathless excitement (or alternatively, the "PhD wannabe that never had the chops to go all the way" drollness) some of us would be ever-so-grateful.