Fukushima: Progress is nice

[RobertEarl]

1. Where is the water coming from?

To the west of Fukushima rise a mountain range of some height. Rains that fall on that mountain either soak into the ground or runoff via streams.

Water that soaks into the ground moves at a snails pace, going down hill over time.

Where Fukushima sits is next to the Pacific ocean. Water in the ocean exists as a barrier to ground water flows. In effect it forces ground water that makes it to the ocean to rise to the surface. Fresh water will float on top of salt water which adds to the upward force of the ground water. So, at the line where the two waters meet, sits Fukushima and always Fukushima has had a high ground water level.

One thing that Tepco did was build a metal wall between the plant and the ocean, hoping to keep the polluted ground water from flowing into the ocean. It worked. But now the ground water is topping that barrier, and saturating the ground upstream under the reactors. That wall may have been a mistake. Testing of that ground water on the reactor side is showing alarmingly high levels of radioactivity. That testing shows that the reactors are leaking into the ground water.