Schrödinger's Corium

The operator of Japan's crippled nuclear plant said Friday that it delayed acknowledging that the plant was leaking contaminated water into the sea because it did not want to worry the public until it was certain there was a problem.

TEPCO President Naomi Hirose said Friday that the company delayed acknowledging contaminated water was leaking into the sea even though obvious signs of leaks were detected in May because officials were waiting until they were certain there was a problem before making such a "major announcement."
Hirose apologized for the delay and said that he and TEPCO executive vice president Zengo Aizawa would take a 10 percent salary cut for one month over the matter.
"Rather than proactively inform the public of potential risks, we retreated to negative thinking and tried to gather more data to ensure there was a problem because it was going to be a major announcement," Hirose said. "We've been trying to reform, but we repeated the same mistake. Obviously, our effort is not enough . We are really sorry."
--Kansas City Star
7/26/13

"Steam-like" Release from Fukushima Daiichi Reactor 3 ...7/18/13
(The primary containment surrounding the reactor vessel
was made of steel 4 to 8 inches thick.)


At Monday's session, Nuclear Regulation Authority officials said highly contaminated water may be leaking into the soil from a number of trenches , allowing the water to seep into the site’s groundwater and eventually into the ocean.

Tepco said Saturday it found extremely high concentrations of radiation in water samples from
a trench near the No. 2 reactor.
It said that the sample had
750 million becquerels of
cesium-134 and 1.6 billion becquerels of cesium-137 per liter.
Both radioactive substances are considered harmful to health.
An NRA official said Monday that the very high levels were likely to be even higher than those within the reactor units themselves.
The elevated concentrations would pose a serious threat if large amounts of water were to leak from the trenches .
It was by far the highest concentration of radioactivity detected since soon after Japan’s March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
While the trenches have long been known to hold water with dangerously high levels of contamination, Tepco said last week that radioactivity was also rising in groundwater at the site.
--Wall Street Journal
7/29/13

Have you ever seen a WINDSPILL poison the water we drink?
Have you ever seen a SUN ACCIDENT poison the food we eat?
Have you ever seen a TIDAL WAVE poison the air we breathe?

Schrödinger's cat:
A cat, a flask of poison, and a radioactive source are placed in a sealed box. If an internal monitor detects radioactivity (i.e. a single atom decaying), the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when one looks in the box, one sees the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead. This poses the question of when exactly quantum superposition ends and reality collapses into one possibility or the other.