The operator of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant said Monday that two seismometers at one of its three melted reactors have been out of order since last year and did not collect data when a powerful earthquake struck the area earlier this month. The acknowledgement raised new questions about whether the company’s risk management has improved since a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011 destroyed much of the plant. The malfunctioning seismometers surfaced during a Nuclear Regulation Authority meeting on Monday to discuss new damage at the plant resulting from a magnitude 7.3 quake that struck the region on Feb. 13. Cooling water and pressure levels fell in the Unit 1 and 3 reactors, indicating additional damage to their primary containment chambers.
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For several years now, the nuclear company TEPCO has wanted to simply dump the tritium-contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean, but they have been stopped by the local fishermen and by other Japanese who insist that “dilution is not the solution to pollution” and that it is a crime to deliberately dump radioactive waste into the ocean. Tritium is a known carcinogen and mutagen. It causes damage to both genes and chromosomes, and affects animal behaviour in deleterious ways. It is at least three times more damaging, and may be as much as 15 times more damaging, than gamma radiation. It enters freely into all organic molecules, including DNA molecules. See www.ccnr.org/tritium_1.html . It’s not just tritium that contaminates the water. There are also residues of many other radioactive poisons such as cesium-137, that concentrates in the fleshy parts of animals and fish (e.g. the meat); stronitum-90, that concentrates in the bones, teeth, and milk of nursing mammals; and other radionuclides that are only partially removed by filtration.
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