I’ll echo Boing Boing’s thoughts on this story: This is no joke. Apparently a series of preventative polymeric water absorbent dams (the diaper-like material) have been unable to stop radioactive water from leaking into the Pacific Ocean.
The situation sounds disastrous, with little if any of the contaminated water being absorbed by the super-absorbant material:
Engineers put 8 kilograms of the polymeric water absorbent together with 60 kilograms of sawdust and three bags of shredded newspaper into pipes leading to a pit connected to the No. 2 reactor building where a 20-centimeter crack has been found to be leaking radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean, the agency said.
However, those materials injected at a point 23 meters away from the seaside pit have not been sucked into the water flow, leaving no impact on the rate of leakage, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the governmental Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.
That blockquote comes courtesy the Kyodo News, which has also reported that containment might not be 100% for “several months.” [Kyodo News via Boing Boing]
RedFireWalker
Monday, April 4, 2011 at 1:37 PMThe emergency crews who are trying to cool down these reactors are spraying it with water directly from the sea which is then contaminating the water with radiation and is flowing directly back into the sea, there is absolutly nothing showing that they are trying to prevent radition entering the pacific ocean, the exact opposite actually, it seems they are doing everything possible to increase this situtaion into the worlds largest nuclear disastor.
If they where reallt interested in containing this meltdown perhaps they should take some lessons from Chernobyl and start dropping some boron ontop of these reactors along with clay, sand and lead, at least that would slow the reaction down to some degre which would give them time to figure out what to do next, where as pumping gallons of sea water over it is doing absolutly nothing at all other than radiating the enitire pacific ocean.
jarrard
Monday, April 4, 2011 at 2:13 PMare you forgetting that they just had a quake and a tsunami or something?
the water pumping into the reactor is completely different to putting those materials in.
the containment cell isnt open to put lead and boron in there. they are pumping sea water from existing pumps that lead to the containment cell.
they are also putting chemicals in the water to slow the reaction.
also, radiation in the ocean dissipates VERY quickly. so its really only harmful in the immediate vicinity.
dont try to act like you know better than the nuclear workers who do it for a living.
RedFireWalker
Monday, April 4, 2011 at 2:50 PMYou seem to be under the impression that they known what their doing, but then I suppose if they knew what they where doing they wouldnt of built a nuclear reactor on a fault line in the first place.
And they are not pumping water throughe existing pumps, there are very clear photos and videos of helicopters and fire trucks dumping and spraying gallon after gallon of water ontop of the reactors and then being allowed to reflow back into the sea.
And sure it dissapates faster in water, but what the hell does that mean when plutonium has a half life of 25,000 years?