Tepco says the leakage comes from underground reservoir No. 2

Apr 6, 2013 07:22 GMT  ·  By

Recent news from Tepco (Tokyo Electric Power Company) says that underground reservoir No. 2 at the Fukushima nuclear plant is now leaking contaminated water into its surroundings.

News of this leakage comes shortly after the two power failures experienced by the nuclear plant in less than a month made headlines.

Apparently, Tepco first became aware of the fact that said reservoir is leaking on April 3, when they carried out a water quality analysis.

“On April 3, order of 101 (Bq/cm3) of radioactive concentration was detected as a result of a water quality analysis of the water between the outermost sheet (bentonite sheet) of three layered sheets and the ground in the underground reservoir No.2,” the company wrote on their website.

“Therefore, we conducted a water quality analysis of the water between the outermost sheet (bentonite sheet) and the inner sheet (two layered water shielding sheet) today (April 5) and detected approximately 106 (Bq/cm3) of radioactive concentration,” they went on to argue.

On April 6, Tepco announced that, following their pinning down this leakage, the contaminated water stored in reactor No. 2 was to be transferred to reservoir No. 1.

By the looks of it, the company has already started transferring this water.

Apart from their reassuring the public that the problem is properly dealt with, Tepco stressed the fact that, as far as they can tell, no contaminated water has thus far leaked into the ocean.

Furthermore, they maintain that there are very little changes of this happening.

“We assume that there is no leakage to the ocean since there is no drainage ditch near the reservoir,” reads one of the company's press releases on the matter at hand.

It is believed that about 120 cubic meters of contaminated water leaked out of reservoir No. 2 before Tepco became aware of the problem and took steps towards solving it.

“We assume that amount of the leaked water is approx. 120 m3, the whole γ radioactive concentration is approx. 1.5 x 100 (Bq/cm3), the whole β radioactive concentration is approx. 5.9 x 103 (Bq/cm3), the whole amount ofγradioactivity is approx. 1.8 x 108 (Bq) and the whole amount of β radioactivity is approx. 7.1 x 1011 (Bq). We are conducting further investigations on this matter,” the company says.

Tepco's press releases concerning this leakage are made available here.