Source: BBC World News
Carnegie’s Mark Hibbs discussed the radiation levels at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant with BBC World News. Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant is back in the headlines as the country’s government reveals plans to deal with the latest leaks of contaminated water at the crippled nuclear facility.
Hibbs told BBC World News the Japanese govenment has two separate water management problems. The first is the water that is moving from the mountains from the central part of the island to the seacoast at a rate of 1,000 tons per day. Hibbs explained that the Fukushima nuclear plant is in between, “so they have to make sure that they can limit to the greatest extent possible the contamination of that water before it gets to the ocean.”
The second problem they have, Hibbs pointed out, is a problem of about 1,000 tanks of water which are leaking at a rate of about 300 tons per day. That water, added Hibbs, is heavily contaminated with cesium, strontium, and other things that were in the core of the reactor when they were pumping that water into the core to cool it during the accident.