Tainted water storage soon to reach capacity at Fukushima plant
May 23, 2011
A nuclear waste disposal facility at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant will be filled up in several days with radioactive floodwater diverted from near its No. 2 and 3 reactors, officials of Tokyo Electric Power Co., the plant's operator, said Monday.
The operator, known as TEPCO, plans to suspend the diversion until the middle of June once the facility becomes filled with the contaminated water, to wait for a new water treatment facility to begin operating.
While a temporary storage tank is also being prepared, its installation would take until around early July, according to the officials.
With the amount of contaminated water expected to increase from continuing leaks from crippled reactors and the inflow of rainwater as the rainy season sets in, the operator is likely to face a greater amount of contaminated water that has nowhere to go, possibly posing another challenge to stabilization work at the plant.
But Hidehiko Nishiyama, spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, indicated Monday that it is unlikely to be a problem, telling a news conference that once the storage space reaches full capacity, the tainted water will be kept where it is for the time being to the extent that it will not overflow.
The waste disposal facility consists of four buildings. The operator, known as TEPCO, has planned to use two of them that underwent work for water tightness as storage space for the contaminated water, with about 10,000 tons of it being planned to be transferred from an underground tunnel near the No. 2 reactor.
As of Monday morning, roughly 8,700 tons of such water has been diverted to the facility at a rate of 12 tons per hour, leaving space for about 1,300 tons of water which would take about five days to fill.
TEPCO plans to divert 4,000 tons of contaminated water from the No. 3 reactor's turbine building, with a total of 2,700 tons having already been transferred as of Monday morning after being diverted at a rate of 20 tons per hour. That has left space for about 1,300 tons which would take about three days to fill.
More than 80,000 tons of contaminated water remains around the Nos. 1 to 4 reactors. TEPCO plans to recycle the water to cool the nuclear fuel inside the Nos. 1 to 3 reactors after desalinating it.
The water contains salt, mainly because seawater was used to cool the reactor cores at the initial phase of the incident, which was precipitated after electricity was cut off at the plant following the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that devastated the country's northeast on March 11.
A giant storage tank that can hold up to about 10,000 tons of water arrived at the shore of the power plant on Saturday. TEPCO plans to divert relatively low-level contaminated water to it as a reserve for temporary tanks installed on the premises.
At the six-reactor plant, the Nos. 1 to 3 reactors have yet to reach full stability with fuel left inside their cores. The No. 4 reactor has no fuel left in its core, but spent fuel assemblies remaining in a storage pool at a building housing the reactor need to remain cooled.
(Distributed by Kyodo News on May 23, 2011)
The operator, known as TEPCO, plans to suspend the diversion until the middle of June once the facility becomes filled with the contaminated water, to wait for a new water treatment facility to begin operating.
While a temporary storage tank is also being prepared, its installation would take until around early July, according to the officials.
With the amount of contaminated water expected to increase from continuing leaks from crippled reactors and the inflow of rainwater as the rainy season sets in, the operator is likely to face a greater amount of contaminated water that has nowhere to go, possibly posing another challenge to stabilization work at the plant.
But Hidehiko Nishiyama, spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, indicated Monday that it is unlikely to be a problem, telling a news conference that once the storage space reaches full capacity, the tainted water will be kept where it is for the time being to the extent that it will not overflow.
The waste disposal facility consists of four buildings. The operator, known as TEPCO, has planned to use two of them that underwent work for water tightness as storage space for the contaminated water, with about 10,000 tons of it being planned to be transferred from an underground tunnel near the No. 2 reactor.
As of Monday morning, roughly 8,700 tons of such water has been diverted to the facility at a rate of 12 tons per hour, leaving space for about 1,300 tons of water which would take about five days to fill.
TEPCO plans to divert 4,000 tons of contaminated water from the No. 3 reactor's turbine building, with a total of 2,700 tons having already been transferred as of Monday morning after being diverted at a rate of 20 tons per hour. That has left space for about 1,300 tons which would take about three days to fill.
More than 80,000 tons of contaminated water remains around the Nos. 1 to 4 reactors. TEPCO plans to recycle the water to cool the nuclear fuel inside the Nos. 1 to 3 reactors after desalinating it.
The water contains salt, mainly because seawater was used to cool the reactor cores at the initial phase of the incident, which was precipitated after electricity was cut off at the plant following the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that devastated the country's northeast on March 11.
A giant storage tank that can hold up to about 10,000 tons of water arrived at the shore of the power plant on Saturday. TEPCO plans to divert relatively low-level contaminated water to it as a reserve for temporary tanks installed on the premises.
At the six-reactor plant, the Nos. 1 to 3 reactors have yet to reach full stability with fuel left inside their cores. The No. 4 reactor has no fuel left in its core, but spent fuel assemblies remaining in a storage pool at a building housing the reactor need to remain cooled.
(Distributed by Kyodo News on May 23, 2011)
