NBC Nightly News: Urgent situation after frightening discovery at Fukushima — Planned ice wall shows Tepco is grasping at straws and can’t stop plant leaking like a sieve — Now almost 900 straight days of contamination flowing in Pacific Lester Holt, NBC News anchor: We’re back tonight with the urgent situation developing in Japan. A frightening new discovery at the Fukushima nuclear plant two and a half years after the disaster there. We learned this week that the plant continues to leak radioactive water and it’s going right into the sea. [...] Ann Thompson, chief environmental affairs correspondent: Today the owners of the crippled fukushima nuclear power plant started pumping contaminated water into temporary storage tanks, a desperate act that in the minds of many is a monument to mismanagement. Dr. Edwin Lyman, Union of Concerned Scientists: It’s leaking like a sieve and groundwater is flushing radioactive contaminants into the groundwater. Thompson: Each day, for 882 days, nearly 72,000 gallons of polluted water has flowed into the Pacific Ocean. [Tepco] is considering freezing the ground around the plant. Essentially building a mile-long ice wall underground, something that’s never been tried before to keep the water out. One scientist I spoke to dismissed this idea as grasping at straws, just more evidence that the power company failed to anticipate this problem, Lester, and now cannot solve it. Holt: Disturbing is an understatement.
Posted on: Tue, 13 Aug 2013 06:26:40 +0000