TEPCO starts moving highly radioactive water to storage facility
Apr. 19, 2011
The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Tuesday started moving highly radioactive water from the No. 2 reactor turbine building to another facility at the site as part of efforts to enable engineers to engage in work to restore key cooling functions of the troubled reactors.
Workers are struggling to remove some 25,000 tons of deadly water in and around the No. 2 turbine building, which has an extremely high level of radiation exceeding 1,000 millisieverts per hour. The total amount of contaminated water accumulating in the plant's premises is estimated to be a little less than 70,000 tons.
The pools of water at the site are believed to be a side effect of a stopgap measure of injecting water into many of the plant's reactors and spent nuclear fuel pools, which have lost cooling functions since the March 11 quake and tsunami, to prevent them from overheating.
With water injection continuing, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said during a press conference Tuesday that a total meltdown is unlikely if the reactors are kept cool ''to a certain extent'' as seen now.
Under a plan by Tokyo Electric Power Co., a total of 10,000 tons of water is expected to be pumped out in around the next four weeks from the No. 2 reactor turbine building and an underground tunnel-like trench connected to it to a nuclear waste disposal facility by using 800 meter-long hoses.
The measure is expected to mark some progress toward settling the country's worst nuclear crisis, but it is uncertain whether the utility firm will be able to smoothly create a system to clean up the removed water and eventually use the water to cool the reactors.
Pumping out the highly contaminated water is also important to prevent it leaking into the Pacific Ocean, given that the trench connected to the No. 2 reactor turbine building is located close to the sea and is also filled up with polluted water.
The water in and around the No. 2 reactor turbine building is believed to originate from the No. 2 reactor's core, where fuel rods have partially melted.
The radiation level inside the building housing the No. 2 reactor stood at 4.1 millisieverts per hour on Monday, according to data obtained by a pair of remote-controlled robots. But Tokyo Electric officials said it was not able to carry out measurements sufficiently because the high humidity had clouded the lenses of the robots.
The reading is lower than the radiation levels detected inside the Nos. 1 and 3 reactor buildings, which were between 10 and 57 millisieverts per hour, but the officials said that the environment is still tough for working because of extremely high humidity found to be between 94 and 99 percent.
The lenses of the robots got clouded soon after they entered the No. 2 reactor building, and they were not able to take further data, the officials said. The robots were called back because the utility did not want them to get lost, they said.
The investigation, conducted by robots provided by U.S. company iRobot Corp., is intended to check whether workers could safely engage in restoration work inside the reactor buildings.
(Distributed by Kyodo News on April 19, 2011)
Workers are struggling to remove some 25,000 tons of deadly water in and around the No. 2 turbine building, which has an extremely high level of radiation exceeding 1,000 millisieverts per hour. The total amount of contaminated water accumulating in the plant's premises is estimated to be a little less than 70,000 tons.
The pools of water at the site are believed to be a side effect of a stopgap measure of injecting water into many of the plant's reactors and spent nuclear fuel pools, which have lost cooling functions since the March 11 quake and tsunami, to prevent them from overheating.
With water injection continuing, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said during a press conference Tuesday that a total meltdown is unlikely if the reactors are kept cool ''to a certain extent'' as seen now.
Under a plan by Tokyo Electric Power Co., a total of 10,000 tons of water is expected to be pumped out in around the next four weeks from the No. 2 reactor turbine building and an underground tunnel-like trench connected to it to a nuclear waste disposal facility by using 800 meter-long hoses.
The measure is expected to mark some progress toward settling the country's worst nuclear crisis, but it is uncertain whether the utility firm will be able to smoothly create a system to clean up the removed water and eventually use the water to cool the reactors.
Pumping out the highly contaminated water is also important to prevent it leaking into the Pacific Ocean, given that the trench connected to the No. 2 reactor turbine building is located close to the sea and is also filled up with polluted water.
The water in and around the No. 2 reactor turbine building is believed to originate from the No. 2 reactor's core, where fuel rods have partially melted.
The radiation level inside the building housing the No. 2 reactor stood at 4.1 millisieverts per hour on Monday, according to data obtained by a pair of remote-controlled robots. But Tokyo Electric officials said it was not able to carry out measurements sufficiently because the high humidity had clouded the lenses of the robots.
The reading is lower than the radiation levels detected inside the Nos. 1 and 3 reactor buildings, which were between 10 and 57 millisieverts per hour, but the officials said that the environment is still tough for working because of extremely high humidity found to be between 94 and 99 percent.
The lenses of the robots got clouded soon after they entered the No. 2 reactor building, and they were not able to take further data, the officials said. The robots were called back because the utility did not want them to get lost, they said.
The investigation, conducted by robots provided by U.S. company iRobot Corp., is intended to check whether workers could safely engage in restoration work inside the reactor buildings.
(Distributed by Kyodo News on April 19, 2011)
