Water pollution in Japan due to earthquake at nuclear facility

After the water pollution incident in Japan in the 1950s when mercury contaminated water polluted the bay of Mianmata, another water pollution disaster was nearly averted after radioactive water from a nuclear power plant may have leaked.

The water pollution incident took place after an earthquake that registered 6.5 magnitude on the Richter scale, struck Japan on the 15th of July.  The quake struck most hard at Niimata, a small town on the coast of Japan, where 900 people were injured. More worrying is that the quake affected the nuclear power-plant of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, one of the biggest in the world, with 7 reactors in exploitation since the mid eighties. The nuclear facility is just one in more than 50 currently in use in Japan.

The earthquake started a fire at an electrical transformer at the nuclear plant. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, but since the nuclear facility was constructed before the modern measures were made mandatory. The plant didn’t have proper equipment for extinguishing the fire started, and coolant from the radioactive core, somehow reached the waters.

The complete opinion is that the company administrating the nuclear facility is still hiding something, and it may be some time until the real level of the water pollution with radioactive elements is known.