More than 2 years after it began, Fukushima nuke disaster not even close to being over

Reuters: Highly radioactive water seeping into the ocean from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is creating an “emergency" that the operator is struggling to contain, an official from the country’s nuclear watchdog said on Monday.

This contaminated groundwater has breached an underground barrier, is rising toward the surface and is exceeding legal limits of radioactive discharge, Shinji Kinjo, head of a Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA) task force, told Reuters.

Countermeasures planned by Tokyo Electric Power Co are only a temporary solution, he said.

Tepco’s “sense of crisis is weak," Kinjo said. “This is why you can’t just leave it up to Tepco alone" to grapple with the ongoing disaster.

“Right now, we have an emergency," he said.

The Fukushima Daiichi incident began in 2011. It’s still happening today. Tell me again how “safe and clean" nuclear energy is the key to the future. When an industry creates waste so toxic it must be buried in the heart of a mountain, calling it “clean" is a joke. And when we look at the ongoing disaster in Japan, “safe" is quite a punchline as well.

[photo by IAEA Imagebank]