An astounding number, which amounts to 1 Sievert per hour, from a puddle.
Half of that is 500 mSv/hour, previously reported in the air over one of the reactors. That's the amount in a hour an American can expect to absorb in a life. Now double that, in an hour.
Just two hours exposed to radiation at 1 Sievert per hour is sometimes fatal, while 8 Sieverts is most definitely fatal. Chernobyl threw off 50 Sieverts near the destroyed core in just ten minutes.
The report comes from Kyodo News today, here:
The concentration level is 10 million times higher than that seen usually in water in a reactor core, according to plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. Hidehiko Nishiyama, spokesman for the government's nuclear safety agency, said the figure is ''quite high'' and ''likely to be coming from the reactor.'' ...
The radioactivity at the surface of the puddle at the No. 3 unit was 400 millisieverts per hour. ...
According to the latest data released Sunday, radioactive iodine-134, a substance which sees its radiation release reduced to about half in some 53 minutes, existed in water at the No. 2 reactor's turbine building at an extremely high concentration of 2.9 billion becquerels per 1 cubic centimeter.
The water also contained such substances as iodine-131 and cesium-137, known as products of nuclear fission, and thus leading to speculation that it may have come through pipes that connect the reactor vessel and turbines, where steam from the reactor is normally directed to for electricity generation.
The pool of water at the No. 4 reactor's turbine building included radioactive substances, but the concentration level was not as high as at the Nos. 1, 2 and 3 buildings, the data showed.
