Strontium flow directly into the sea at Fukushima Daiichi

(Photograph: AP)
Answer and question at Tepco’s press conference.

Oshidori mako asks:
When Tepco purifies contaminated water, a Reverse Osmosis Membrane is used, but strontium is water soluble so you need ion-exchange filtration or coagulating sedimentation to remove it from the contaminated water. -> How do you filter strontium out?

Tepco, Matsumoto answers:
When the equipment of AREVA was working, we used coagulating sedimentation to filter out strontium.
However, now that AREVA’s equipment is out of order. – Strontium is not filtered out.

Oshidori mako asks:
I understand that water is not leaked to the sea now, but when water WAS leaking into the sea from Reactor 2, how did you filter out strontium?

Tepco, Matsumoto answers:
No, we haven’t filtered out strontium. Strontium must have leaked to the sea.

(Source)

About this site

This website updates the latest news about the Fukushima nuclear plant and also archives the past news from 2011. Because it's always updated and added live, articles, categories and the tags are not necessarily fitted in the latest format.
I am the writer of this website. About page remains in 2014. This is because my memory about 311 was clearer than now, 2023, and I think it can have a historical value. Now I'm living in Romania with 3 cats as an independent data scientist.
Actually, nothing has progressed in the plant since 2011. We still don't even know what is going on inside. They must keep cooling the crippled reactors by water, but additionally groundwater keeps flowing into the reactor buildings from the broken parts. This is why highly contaminated water is always produced more than it can circulate. Tepco is planning to officially discharge this water to the Pacific but Tritium is still remaining in it. They dilute this with seawater so that it is legally safe, but scientifically the same amount of radioactive tritium is contained. They say it is safe to discharge, but none of them have drunk it.

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