From USA TODAY:
…Repairs on the Japanese nuclear plant have continued, with pumps instead of fire engines now cooling all three reactors, using fresh water instead of corrosive seawater. Some of that pumping has evidently led to the latest problem: water laced with radioactive elements from the partly melted reactor fuel rods that has pooled inside buildings and in trenches near reactors.
“They have to keep that cooling water running,” said nuclear engineer James Stubbins of the University of Illinois. He and other experts suspect that earthquake or pressure-related damage to pipes leading from the reactors to a turbine building have led to floods of radioactive water. In one trench near a reactor with damage to its containment vessel, the water emits enough radiation to expose workers to their yearly dosage of radiation in less than 15 minutes.
Workers at the plant halted efforts Wednesday to pump the contaminated water in the trenches and building into turbine building tanks after they had become full. They want to switch to a 25,000-ton tank at the site. But strategies for controlling radiation that still vents into the air and flows with water out to the sea appear to be broadening…
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