Nuclear expert admits Fukushima reactors melted into the ground, contaminating hundreds of tons of groundwater daily

Friday, January 10, 2014 by: Thomas Henry
Tags: Fukushima, nuclear reactors, groundwater contamination

(NaturalNews) Fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster from two and a half years ago continues to silently impact health and safety around the world. After explosions in four of the six reactors, three melted down into the ground, and there is no way to simply plug the dam.

The effects of this unprecedented disaster continue to play out in slow motion. But of course, what isn't seen remains little talked about in the media or among the public.

Recent accounts reveal that Japanese officials continue to refuse to publicly acknowledge the extent of the problem and are actively covering up the truth to hold together the appearance that everything is normal, and that all is well.

According to Takashi Hirose, author of Fukushima Meltdown: The World's First Earthquake-Tsunami-Nuclear Disaster, there are reports of widespread contamination levels in food, including fish and vegetables, that is being distributed to Tokyo and other areas of Japan. Hirose asserts that there are credible claims that food originating in the Fukushima prefecture is shipped to other locales, then reshipped out with labels stating that it originated from other prefectures - masking its origins and hiding the threat of bioaccumulated radiation in the food web.

Meanwhile, a nuclear expert spotlighted the volume of radioactive materials - on the order of 300 tons of water per day - that continues to flow out from the melted down reactor cores at the power plant into the Pacific Ocean day in and day out, with no hope of slowing down, continually increasing global exposure since 2011.

The president and co-founder of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, Gordon Edwards, discussed the extent of the continued contamination during a radio interview with The Green Majority on 89.5 FM in Toronto on December 6, 2013. Edwards holds a Ph.D. in mathematics and has served as a nuclear consultant and testified as a nuclear expert in Canadian courts.

Shockingly, Edwards stated, "There are about 300 tons of contaminated water every day going into the Pacific Ocean underground. That's because the cores of the reactors have melted into the ground, and now the groundwater is flowing underneath the reactors and it's washing that radioactive material out into the Pacific Ocean at the rate of 300 tons per day."

The water pumped in to cool the melted reactor cores then becomes contaminated, pumped out again and washed out into the ocean in volume.

"They have been pumping 400 tons of water from the surface down into the reactor cores and then pumping the contaminated water back up again," Edwards added.

Back in October, officials from TEPCO, the primarily government-owned Tokyo Electric Power Company, were mocked as "silly" for claiming that the irradiated groundwater flowing into the Pacific Ocean remained within a 0.12 square mile radius (0.3 square kilometers), asserting that the contamination was easily contained within a bay immediately in front of the reactor site. Nevertheless, that statement was supported by the Japanese government, according to Bloomberg News.

"These statements like a 0.3 square-kilometer zone are silly. It's not true to the science," said Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who began his career studying how radioactive nucleotides from Chernobyl dispersed through the Black Sea.

"The credibility problem is as great as the engineering solution. There's a lack of trust that they keep reinforcing by saying things like 'beyond this 0.3 kilometers zone there's no release,'" Buesseler added, drawing from data that his own team took off the coast of Fukushima.

While measurements for radioactivity are being taken near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors for cesium levels, very little testing is being done for tritium or strontium-90, which Buesseler indicated could be troublesome, as strontium mimics calcium and stores for long periods in bones, creating exposure routes in food sources including fish.

In an attempt to control what many have dubbed the greatest nuclear disaster in history, TEPCO has built over a thousand tanks, and growing, to house the contaminated water. According to Gordon Edwards, these holding tanks, already leaking, are larger disasters waiting to happen - should a new storm or other weather event happen, for instance.

"All that contaminated water is just sitting there," Edwards said. "They found a pool of water beside the tank that was leaking, that pool of water - they measured the radiation levels - if a person stood beside that pool of water for 1 hour, they would die of radiation poisoning. So that's how contaminated this water is."

A fresh report from RT highlighted many of the makeshift solutions being used in vain to try to contain the vast amounts of contaminated water. It quoted fallout researcher Christina Consolo, of RadChick Radiation Research & Mitigation, who said, "The site has been propped up with duct tape and a kick-stand for over two years. Many of their 'fixes' are only temporary."

At least 71 U.S. sailors who responded to Fukushima aboard the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan have reportedly developed leukemia, thyroid cancer and brain tumors, and are in the process of filing a lawsuit against TEPCO for allegedly downplaying the dangers of nuclear radiation near the Daiichi plant.

Sources for this article include:

http://enenews.com

http://www.counterpunch.org

http://www.bloomberg.com

http://rt.com

http://ecowatch.com

http://science.naturalnews.com