Japan to raise severity rating for Fukushima leaks to level 3

[homasse]

Japan to raise severity rating for Fukushima leaks to level 3

Japan will raise the severity rating of a recent toxic water leak at the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant to level 3, or "serious incident", on an international scale for radiological releases, underlining the deepening sense of crisis at the site.Contaminated water with dangerously

Comments

[shortsweetcynic]

So, about a week ago, TEPCO accidentally sprayed radioactive water on workers to keep them cool

seriously?! D:

jesus, what a mess.

[homasse]

TEPCO is full of fail.

[dissident]

I almost have to wonder if they're doing it on purpose

[kitanabychoice]

wow. it seems like corporations are made of the same shitty stuff no matter what country you're in.

[nerwende]

Okay, I know a lot of shit is going on around the world right now, but I find the lack of reaction to this alarming. And I don't mean just here at _p. Maybe it's because there's an aspect of detachment to the whole thing, we can't really DO anything about it. I don't know. This is just so terrifying and angering.

[gambitia]

It's kind of like all the pipelines that are leaking, and all the earthquakes and drought from fracking, and the oil rig explosions. "Oh look, another case of gross corporate negligence leading to catastrophic loss." Goddammit, this shit is becoming commonplace.

I don't know what the solution is aside from other people stop being greedy assbastards.

[the_physicist]

yeah, i remember just the other day i read the bit about the 300 tons of radioactive water leaking out TEPCO saying it doesn't know how it leaked out or where it has leaked to. UM WHAT?! And then labelled it a level 1. I was like: SUUUUURRRE...

horrifying.

But it should be mentioned here that we aren't just talking about a one off spill of 300 tons of water. That one off spill happened in addition to a huge daily contamination.

AT FUKUSHIMA UP TO 300 TONS OF HIGHLY CONTAMINATED WATER SEEP INTO THE SEA EVERY SINGLE DAY.

sorry, but not sorry for the capslock. this is just under reported as hell over here.

(a random source i googled for that, but there are probably many more official sources, such as the Japanese environmental agency: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/09/fukushima-fallout-threatens-fishermens-livelihoods )

[gambitia]

That's just inexcusable.

The tsunami was catastrophically huge, so I can't completely blame Tepco for having the meltdown. But they need to fix this, and if they can't, they need to find someone who can. And TBQH the government should have wrenched control from Tepco long ago.

[the_physicist]

it boggles my mind too

[gambitia]

Well, at least that last paragraph gives me hope. If I've already been living with contaminated ocean water and haven't turned into Cyclops, I guess I shouldn't be so shocked.

Is there a way to detox these chemicals? I think a lot about climate change and the ensuing acidification and contamination of the ocean, but am not hard science enough to think of solutions. My thoughts on acidification are "dump a bunch of baking soda in!" and on melting ice caps are "can we like, stick a bunch of freezers up there to force them not to melt?" Yes, I failed chemistry in school.