Fukushima Daiichi was not the only nuclear plant in Japan shut down as a direct result of the March 11, 2011 disasters.
The Japan Atomic Power Company (JAPCo) revealed that their Tokai nuclear plant has leaked more than 20 tons of radioactive water since October 2011!
The radioactive water has been leaking into one of the buildings. The current leak was detected after water used to hose down employees was testing positive for high levels of radiation. Somehow the radioactive water got into the rinse water for employees.
JAPCo says they don’t know where the radioactive water is coming from! They have yet to pump out the building where it has been flooded with the contaminated water. Gee this sounds familiar? TEPCo? Fukushima Daiichi?
But wait, there’s lots more tales of incompetence regarding the Tokai nuclear power plant.
It turns out that Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency discovered leaks last year! After an inspection the government agency warned JAPCo that the building housing reactor 2 was filling with radioactive water.
On top of that, JAPCo’s own employees said an alarm went off at 10:20 on October 26, 2011. Water was pouring from a pipe at the bottom of the reactor’s pressure vessel. JAPCo blew it off saying it was a minor leak easily fixed. That minor leak ended up being 22.4 tons (according to media source Japan Today)!
Since then another 2.2 tons of radioactive water went ‘missing’. That’s how much contaminated water disappeared between the October 2011 leak and March 16, 2012. Then on Saturday, March 17, workers discovered their rinse water was now radioactive.
On closer inspection they realized that 1.2 tons of radioactive water somehow got into their rinse water tanks! Upon inspection of reactor 2 building, they found it is flooded with contaminated water (just like the buildings at Fukushima Daiichi).
Can’t blame GE on this one, the Tokai nuclear plant is Japan’s first nuke power factory, and it was built by the British.
Immediately after the March 11, 2011 Mega Quake and tsunami, it was being reported that the Tokai nuke plant survived the tsunami because the sea wall had been raised. It was also reported that Tokai didn’t rely on cooling systems like at Fukushima Daiichi. Both reports have proven to been a little misleading.
On March 13, 2011, Japan’s Fire and Disaster Management Agency reported that one of three seawater cooling pumps quit working. Tokai was lucky in that the other two pumps were still working, as well as their diesel generators.
Regarding the raised sea wall. It was still overrun by the tsunami, one reason being that there were cable holes in the new wall that still needed to be plugged.
Tokai failed a recent stress test because its electrical systems are unable to survive future earthquakes.
But to make matters more confusing, Japanese media is not being very specific when reporting on the Tokai nuclear power plant. You see there are two nuclear reactors one called Tokai I, the other called Tokai II.
In 1998 Tokai I (reactor 1) was shut down and was supposed to have been dismantled by 2011, yet the way Japanese media is talking the dismantling is still on going.
Tokai II (reactor 2) was still operational when the 2011 tsunami hit. It is the one that is currently flooding with radioactive water from a mystery source!