Plant's Nos. 1, 2, 3 Reactors All Suffered Meltdown: TEPCO
Selasa, 24 Mei 2011 by Android Blackberry
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| Fukushima Dai-1's nuclear reactors work |
TOKYO -The operator with the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy plant mentioned Tuesday that fuel rods inside three of the facility’s reactors most likely melted within the days promptly after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
Tokyo Electric Power Co mentioned final week that repaired water gauges showed that fuel rods in Unit 1 in the plant had mostly melted and fallen into a lump at the bottom of the pressure vessel - a state that TEPCO officials have described as a meltdown - just after the complex’s cooling program was knocked out by the tsunami.
Fresh information from Units 2 and 3 indicate that fuel rods in those reactors are in a comparable state, spokeswoman Aya Omura mentioned Tuesday.
In all 3 reactors, the melted fuel is mostly covered with water and remains at temperatures far beneath unsafe levels, officials say.
“We have analyzed data, which showed that it was highly likely that the majority of the fuel rods have melted. Nonetheless it is unlikely that melting fuel rods could worsen the crisis because the melted fuels are covered in water,” mentioned Takeo Iwamoto, a business spokesman.
TEPCO continues to face obstacles in bringing the radiation-leaking plant under manage.
On Monday, officials mentioned temporary containers holding radioactive water pumped from the reactors are almost full, raising issues they could overflow and leak into the sea once more. They said the water could fill the tanks in 3 days and also a program to reprocess the water - now measuring a lot more than 80,000 tons - for reuse within the reactors was not finished.
Completely ridding the plant with the contaminated water - that is definitely pooling in reactor and turbine buildings, trenches and pits - could take by means of the finish of December, TEPCO spokesman Junichi Matsumoto has mentioned. The amount of contaminated water could at some point swell to about 200,000 tons, as TEPCO continues to pump water in to the reactors and their spent fuel storage pools to assist control temperatures and radiation.
Matsumoto had at first said the storage space could final until the system was ready in mid-June. If the storage containers reach full capacity, the water would must keep within the turbine basement regions.
TEPCO has been working with French nuclear engineering giant Areva on a technique to reprocess the water so it could then be pumped back into the reactors for cooling.
The operator has also been scrambling bring in additional containers for water that is definitely less radioactive. A giant floating storage tank that can hold about 10,000 tons of water arrived at the plant more than the weekend.
TEPCO also maintained its view that it was only soon after the giant tsunami hit soon after the devastating March 11 earthquake that the plant lost all its energy sources, eventually top for the loss of the reactors’ essential cooling functions.
The company submitted a report on its assessment about the reactors to the government’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, business minister Banri Kaieda mentioned the government agreed at a cabinet meeting Tuesday to create a third-party panel to search in to the causes with the country’s worst ever nuclear crisis.
The government has tapped Yotaro Hatamura, a 70-year-old professor emeritus in the University of Tokyo, as head with the particular panel, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku mentioned inside a press conference.
Yotaro Hatamura, a veteran researcher on human errors, will head the panel which has energy to access accident-related documents and question persons concerned including officials with the plant operator, Cabinet members and bureaucrats, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku told a news conference.
Hatamura, 70, an emeritus professor in the University of Tokyo, plus the other members, mainly academics, plan to compile a mid-term report on the matters in December as well as a final report will likely be due by summer time 2012, government officials mentioned.
The panel can also be made to produce suggestions to ease the influence of the nuclear accident on residents who were forced to evacuate from their households close to the plant following the nuclear emergency
