Summary of situation by Iori

August 30, 2013

Summary of Fukushima situation – The difference among contaminated water, groundwater and sea contamination

http://fukushima-diary.com/2013/08/column-summary-of-fukushima-situation-the-difference-among-contaminated-water-groundwater-and-sea-contamination/

The contaminated water situation is getting increasingly complicated. I think some people are too busy to follow up. Here I’d like to summarize the situation short so you can read it before the next metro station.

■ The difference among contaminated water, groundwater and sea contamination.

1. Contaminated water 

Contaminated water comes from the coolant water because the buildings are crippled. It’s retained in the building, tanks, and the trenches underground. It keeps increasing and Tepco is building the storage tanks in a hurry. Some of the tanks had leakage recently.

2. Groundwater 

Groundwater becomes contaminated groundwater when it comes close to the plant buildings. This is the main cause of the sea contamination. Tepco is also stocking this in the tanks. It’s less contaminated than (1) but the volume is huge. It’s overflowing to the sea, flowing into the plant buildings to overwhelm the storage capacity, and also coming up to the ground surface near the seaside. (It doesn’t “leak” because it’s outside from the beginning)

3. Sea contamination 

Sea contamination is mostly caused by the contaminated groundwater. To know the actual sea contamination situation, they need to take samples near the sea surface, bottom of the sea, and in the middle, inside of the plant port and outside, also offshore the plant. However currently the sea contamination is not entirely researched.