"Oh, you mean THAT ice wall. Well..."

"Since the ice isn't stopping the water, now we're going to pump cement into the leaks."

Um.  Hey, if cement was going to work, wouldn't it have been cheaper to just pump cement in the first place?

Nope, not going to work, either.  If water flow is reduced here- the pressure, and flow rate, will go up there- making a new leak in a place where the ice was - sort of- working.

Which is why they didn't try cement in the first place.  It's a game of whack-a-mole; where the moles dig new holes as fast as you whack.  But hey- we're doing something!

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20160606_28/

"TEPCO expands ice wall operations at Fukushima

"Tokyo Electric Power Company has expanded operations to create an underground ice wall at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to stop the volume of contaminated groundwater from increasing.

"TEPCO on Monday began injecting a liquid refrigerant into more pipes that make up the 1,500-meter wall surrounding 4 damaged reactor buildings. The operation now covers 95 percent of the wall.

"Groundwater flows into the buildings and becomes tainted with radioactive substances. Reducing its volume is a key to decommissioning the reactors.

"The operation started in March on the downstream side of the wall because lowering the water levels too much could cause tainted water to leak from the buildings.

"Workers began freezing the upstream side after making sure there were no leaks.

"The ice wall project still faces challenges. Ground temperatures have not fallen in some places, and groundwater levels outside the wall have not gone down.

"Also on Monday, workers began injecting cement into the ground where temperatures have not fallen."

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Particularly fun is this bit:

"Workers began freezing the upstream side after making sure there were no leaks.

"The ice wall project still faces challenges. Ground temperatures have not fallen in some places, and groundwater levels outside the wall have not gone down."

Translation: They started freezing the other side after making sure there were no leaks.  But there are leaks - with no measurable effect on water levels anywhere.................

"Ice wall? What ice wall?"

You can learn a huge amount about how to obfuscate everything using Public Relations, just by reading, sequentially, the press releases about the Fukushima "incident".

Today, from NHK (as usual, copied in toto here)  "They believe that water is leaking from a hole near the cooling system. .. Water injected to cool the melted nuclear fuel continues to leak into the reactor building."

And there is not a peep here, in this article about water leaking, about any ice wall, intended to stop water from leaking...

What they are not explicit about is that they are still pumping water directly on to the melted reactor core; in order to keep it from reaching "prompt criticality" - as soon as it's hot enough.  That's a little mini-nuclear explosion; not a bomb, but an actual chain reaction fission event powerful enough to blow the melted core all over the prefecture (and into the ocean).

So, we don't want that, do we, so, we keep pumping water in- and it keeps disappearing somewhere (i.e. leaking out- after having been in the reactor core... and not just "into the reactor building".

Oh, and, in the following story they neatly avoid mentioning that THREE reactor cores melted down entirely- they just want to talk about #2 here.  Oh, and, it wasn't really their fault; the reactor, and all its safety devices, didn't work right.  Can't blame us for a bad machine, now really.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20160605_02/

TEPCO:Cooling water leakage likely caused meltdown

"The operator of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says a water leak in the number 2 reactor emergency cooling system may have contributed to its meltdown.

"The plant lost power following a massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11th 2011.

"The emergency cooling system began operating right away, driven by steam generated in the reactors. The system's pumps were designed to inject coolant into the reactors during an emergency.

"The number 2 reactor's emergency cooling equipment lost its function on March 14th, 3 days after the disaster.

"The exact cause of the failure remains unknown more than 5 years after the accident.

"Workers tried to inject water from outside, but were unsuccessful in cooling it down. This led to the nuclear fuel meltdown and release of radioactive substances into the air that spread across the region.

"Experts at Tokyo Electric Power Company analyzed the level of contaminated water inside the number 2 reactor, as well as the amount of leaked water.

"They believe that water is leaking from a hole near the cooling system.

"The experts suspect that cooling water began leaking from the system after the pumps had operated beyond the 8 hours for which they were designed.

"They believe the water leakage was the major cause of the reactor heating up.

"Water injected to cool the melted nuclear fuel continues to leak into the reactor building. This contaminated water is hampering decommissioning work at the plant."

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We can all be grateful they continue to work so diligently on the "problems".

And actually; if you read the above in one particular way, what it says is: "The meltdown caused the emergency cooling system to break down, which caused the meltdown."   Yeah, it can be read differently; but.

The experts suspect.