A nuclear plant known as Fukushima is in the process of building an ice wall with the aim of preventing contaminated water from flowing out of the facility into the earth. Yuichi Okamura, who is an architect, insists that rainfall and spaces in the wall will permit water to leak into and out of the facility, and generate up to 50 tons of radioactive water per day. The wall is designed to be 1 mile in length, and contain a pipe that goes 30 meters into the ground, within the facility. The pipes will carry refrigerant at -30° Celsius and freeze the nearby soil. The power needed for the cooling process is extremely expensive.
TEPCO, the operator of Fukushima plant, has received sharp criticism regarding concerns of groundwater. Shigeaki Tsunoyama, who is a professor and a former university president, thinks that the issue of water contamination would have been minimized if a concrete wall had been built into the nearby hill immediately after the tsunami and earthquake disasters that occurred in 2011. The cost of building the ice wall is $312 million, which is a figure critics consider a taxpayer’s money wastage. TEPCO has not escaped criticism for the way it handled 2011 Fukushima crisis in which natural disasters destroyed reactors. It was the most horrible nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
The information contained in this news article is relevant to what was studied in class. Indeed, groundwater is a primary source, which can readily be contaminated majorly through human activities. Classwork highlighted some of the common sources of groundwater contamination, which include landfills, fertilizer and pesticide use, sewage systems, and chemicals spills, especially from industries. Radioactive water contamination is a rare, but most harmful form of water pollution. Hence, there is need to regulate the human activities that can have detrimental effects on water sources.
Figure 1: The Ice Wall and its Network of Underground Pipes
Work Cited
Hanai, Toru. “Fukushima ice wall won't stop all radioactive groundwater from seeping out –
chief architect.” Reuters, 28 Apr. 2016. Web. 3 May 2016. https://www.rt.com/news/341231-fukushima-ice-wall-groundwater/
