One in a million may sound like a good thing. One tank out of a thousand leaking more contaminated water at the damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Japan is a bad thing. On October 3rd there was yet another emergency news conference held by Masayuki Ono, a spokesperson for the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), announcing that workers had accidentally caused another minor leak by pumping more contaminated water into one of the temporary 450-ton water storage tanks “without a water gauge and standing on an unlevel ground, slightly tilting toward the sea” (Associated Press, 2013). What caused the problem this time? The tank was already about 98% full, which it should not have been in the first place, and was not equipped with the appropriate safety measures to alert them if the tank was about to overflow. The amount of water, approximately 110 gallons, was a virtual drop in a vast bucket of contaminated water, but demonstrates the ongoing incompetence of TEPCO to adequately handle the disaster, and the Japanese government’s unwillingness to intervene or allow outside help to come in and take over the important task of keeping more contaminated water from running out into the ocean. According to Kayoko Nakamura, a Nuclear Regulation Authority commissioner, who is very critical of the way TEPCO is managing the cleanup, “they seem to lack even the most basic knowledge about radiation” (Associated Press, 2013). This is not what the global community wants to hear about the people in charge of cleaning up the worst nuclear disaster our planet has seen since the meltdown at the Chernobyl power plant in 1986.
References
Associated Press. (2013, October 3). Overflowing Tank Cause of New Leak at Fukushima. ABC News. Retrieved from http://abcnews.go.com.
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