Pumping begins at Dai-ichi to prepare way for repair crews
Source: Agencies |
April 20, 2011, Wednesday
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THE operator of Japan's crippled nuclear plant began pumping highly radioactive water from the basement of one of its buildings to a makeshift storage area yesterday in a crucial step toward easing the nuclear crisis.
Removing the 25,000 metric tons (about 25 million liters) of contaminated water that has collected in the basement of a turbine building at Unit 2 of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant will help allow access for workers trying to restore vital cooling systems that were knocked out by the March 11 tsunami.
It is one of many steps in a lengthy process to resolve the crisis.
Tokyo Electric Power Co projected in a road map released over the weekend that it would take up to nine months to reach a cold shutdown of the plant. But government officials acknowledge that setbacks could slow the timeline.
The water will be removed in stages, with the first third of it handled over the coming 20 days, said Hidehiko Nishiyama of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.
In all, there are 70,000 tons of contaminated water to be removed from the plant's reactor and turbine buildings and nearby trenches, and the process could take months.
TEPCO is bringing the water to a storage building that was flooded during the tsunami with lightly contaminated water that was later pumped into the ocean to make room for the highly contaminated water.
The operator plans to use technology developed by French nuclear engineering giant Areva to reduce radioactivity and remove salt from the contaminated water so it can be reused to cool the plant's reactors.
Once the water in the plant buildings is safely removed and radioactivity levels decline, workers can begin repairing the cooling systems for the reactors in operation at the time of the tsunami.
With the nuclear crisis dragging on, public frustration with the government is growing. Opinion polls show more than two-thirds of Japanese are unhappy with the leadership of Prime Minister Naoto Kan.
TEPCO has offered residents forced to evacuate from homes around the plant about US$12,000 per household as interim compensation. People elsewhere in the disaster zone who lost houses to the tsunami - which also left more than 27,000 dead or missing - say help has been slow to materialize.
Removing the 25,000 metric tons (about 25 million liters) of contaminated water that has collected in the basement of a turbine building at Unit 2 of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant will help allow access for workers trying to restore vital cooling systems that were knocked out by the March 11 tsunami.
It is one of many steps in a lengthy process to resolve the crisis.
Tokyo Electric Power Co projected in a road map released over the weekend that it would take up to nine months to reach a cold shutdown of the plant. But government officials acknowledge that setbacks could slow the timeline.
The water will be removed in stages, with the first third of it handled over the coming 20 days, said Hidehiko Nishiyama of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.
In all, there are 70,000 tons of contaminated water to be removed from the plant's reactor and turbine buildings and nearby trenches, and the process could take months.
TEPCO is bringing the water to a storage building that was flooded during the tsunami with lightly contaminated water that was later pumped into the ocean to make room for the highly contaminated water.
The operator plans to use technology developed by French nuclear engineering giant Areva to reduce radioactivity and remove salt from the contaminated water so it can be reused to cool the plant's reactors.
Once the water in the plant buildings is safely removed and radioactivity levels decline, workers can begin repairing the cooling systems for the reactors in operation at the time of the tsunami.
With the nuclear crisis dragging on, public frustration with the government is growing. Opinion polls show more than two-thirds of Japanese are unhappy with the leadership of Prime Minister Naoto Kan.
TEPCO has offered residents forced to evacuate from homes around the plant about US$12,000 per household as interim compensation. People elsewhere in the disaster zone who lost houses to the tsunami - which also left more than 27,000 dead or missing - say help has been slow to materialize.
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