The news gets worse and better.
About 15 metric tons of water with a low level of radiation leaked from a storage tank at the plant on the Pacific coast, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.
Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) said it was investigating the cause of the leak which was later repaired.
via Radioactive water leaks from Japan’s damaged plant | Reuters.
If my math is right (I don’t have my Fukushima cheat sheet with me), this is less than one hour’s worth of water throughput, and it is lightly contaminated, not heavily. That’s not good, but it’s a lot better than it could be.
And, the decontamination machinery which was abruptly stopped after running only an hour and a half on Monday is back in operation on Tuesday, which is very good news indeed. I do not know what the flow rate is for the machinery, but 20 cubic meters per hour is the magic number to avoid an overflow catastrophe, which would make today’s announced leak look like tapwater.
Ganbatte.
