This will be a short diary, just kinda bringing this to everyone's attention and it's a situation I've followed for years. So this just showed up in my FB stream.
And now fresh plumes of steam have been seen coming out the structure. These have now been confirmed by Tepco, the owner of the nuclear plant, from 19th December onwards. The company believes the steam is coming from the fifth floor of the building.
However it does not know the cause of the steam.
As someone who lives in the Pacific Northwest I'd like to know the cause of the steam and the lack of coverage in the trad-western media of the Fukushima meltdown has always concerned me.
Suspect news links removed
The Examiner reports there was steam spotted as long ago as last July. Now I'm not one to panic and run out and buy plastic sheeting and iodine pills, but I will be keeping an eye on it and if you live in the Pacific Northwest you might want to follow the situation as well. There is 89 tons of spent fuel in the pool on top of reactor 3 and if it joims the party it could be problematic.
UPDATE:
For those who don't like to follow linkies the steam is coming from one of three things.
1) Rainwater has found it's way intoreactor 3's containment vessel or the reactor itself.
2) The corrium has reached ground water under reactor 3
3) A meltdown in the spent fuel pool is taking place
TEPCO can't figure out the cause of then steam because the radiation levels at rector 3 are too high to get too close.
UPDATE 2:
Alright I pulled out the laptop, I orginally posted from my tablet with what I felt were the best sources I could find. There are some concerns about the sourcing of this story all returning to the Turner Radio Network, and I share those concerns. The disaster is serious enough at Fukushima without alarmist reporting. From what I can tell about the Gaurdian's Liberty Voice (formerly Gaurdian Express) link above they source the story of the recently appearing steam to a Tepco official and NOT the Turner Radio Network article. I shall however now go and see if there is other coverage out there not from RT.
UPDATE 3:
H/T to Claudius Bombarnac the reports of the steam come from Tepco itself.
http://translate.google.com/...
UPDATE 4:
H/t to Horsefeathers for linking to Snopes that got me another less sensational link.
http://enenews.com/...
UPDATE 5: I have removed the 2 sources that were light on credibility but have left the others up. As has been pointing out the appearance of steam may mean nothing more than it is now visible due to weather conditions.
UPDATE 6: Another link to a blog I just discovered H/T to skod.
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/...
UPDATE 7: Here is the link to Tepco's live cam
http://www.tepco.co.jp/...
and here is the link to the Tepco english site regarding the steam
http://www.tepco.co.jp/...
H/t to CindyCassela