No different than when the BP Oil spill occurred in the Gulf of Mexico the only way of determining the damage to the Pacific is through subsurface rovers. This is a very difficult task and wont' happen in a short period of time. The long term effects of this disaster has to be estimated to decide what happens to sea life and fisheries.
Another day, another leak: One more Fukushima cooling tank pollutes Pacific (click here)
Published time: October 03, 2013 10:43
Another cooling tank has sprung a leak at Japan’s troubled Fukushima nuclear power plant. As in previous instances, the highly radioactive water is thought to be seeping directly into the Pacific Ocean. This is the second such incident in two months.
Although the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has promised more accountability following a series of blunders in recent months, it has become clear to Japan’s government that the plant operator simply cannot deal with the problem on its own, forcing them to step in last month and start contributing funds.
The newest leak amounts to about 430 liters of radioactive water spilling in a period of 12 hours. That water contained 200,000 becquerels per liter of Strontium 90 and other harmful beta-emitting isotopes. That is tens of thousands of times more than the legal 30-becquerel limit.
While the plant operator has been pumping hundreds of tons of water a day over the damaged reactors to cool them in the aftermath of the 2011 meltdowns, it also relied on makeshift water tanks above ground to store excessive radioactive water....
