You may have heard that Tepco - the operator of the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plants - announced [4] a large leak [5] of radioactive water.
You may have heard that the cooling system in the spent fuel pools at Fukushima has failed for a second time in a month [6].
This is newsworthy stuff ... but completely misses the big picture.
Japanese experts say that Fukushima is currently releasing up to 93 billion becquerels of radioactive cesium [7] into the ocean each day.
How much radiation is this?
A quick calculation shows that it is about ten thousand times less than the amounts released by Chernobyl during the actual fire [8] at the Russian nuclear plant. But the Chernobyl fire only last 10 days ... and the Fukushima release has been ongoing for more than 2 years so far.
Indeed, Fukushima has already spewed much more radioactive cesium [9] and iodine [10] than Chernobyl. The amount of radioactive cesium released by Fukushima was some 20-30 times higher [11] than initially admitted.
Fukushima also pumped out huge amounts of radioactive iodine 129 [12] – which has a half-life of 15.7 million years [13]. Fukushima has also dumped up to 900 trillion becquerels of radioactive strontium-90 [14] – which is a powerful internal emitter which mimics calcium and collects in our bones [15] – into the ocean.
And the amount of radioactive fuel at Fukushima dwarfs Chernobyl [16] ... and so could keep leaking for decades, centuries or millenia.
Tepco graphics of the Fukushima plants even appear to show water directly flowing [17] from the plant to the ocean. And see this [18].
The bottom line is that the reactors have lost containment [19]. There are not "some leaks" at Fukushima. "Leaks" imply that the reactor cores are safely in their containment buildings, and there is a small hole or two which need to be plugged. But scientists don't even know where the cores of the reactors are [19]. That's not leaking. That's even worse than a total meltdown [20].
So what are the consequences for people living outside of Fukushima itself?
They could [21] be quite severe [22], indeed [23].