Puzzle over steam from crippled reactor building
Source: Agencies |
July 19, 2013, Friday
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STEAM is rising from a destroyed building that houses a reactor at Japan's crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, the operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co, said yesterday.
TEPCO said levels of radioactivity around the plant had remained unchanged and it was looking into what triggered the emission.
"It's possible that rain made its way through the reactor building and having fallen on the primary containment vessel, which is hot, then evaporated, creating steam," said a TEPCO spokeswoman.
Each reactor is surrounded by a primary containment vessel made of strengthened steel, up to eight inches thick.
Steam was spotted rising from the reactor No.3 building at 8:20am by a subcontractor filming the destroyed building and preparing to remove rubble from the site. It was still visible two hours later.
An earthquake and tsunami in 2011 killed nearly 20,000 people and set off the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years when the Fukushima plant was destroyed causing reactor meltdowns, hydrogen explosions and leaking radiation.
A week ago, a huge spike in radioactive cesium was detected in groundwater nearby.
TEPCO said levels of radioactivity around the plant had remained unchanged and it was looking into what triggered the emission.
"It's possible that rain made its way through the reactor building and having fallen on the primary containment vessel, which is hot, then evaporated, creating steam," said a TEPCO spokeswoman.
Each reactor is surrounded by a primary containment vessel made of strengthened steel, up to eight inches thick.
Steam was spotted rising from the reactor No.3 building at 8:20am by a subcontractor filming the destroyed building and preparing to remove rubble from the site. It was still visible two hours later.
An earthquake and tsunami in 2011 killed nearly 20,000 people and set off the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years when the Fukushima plant was destroyed causing reactor meltdowns, hydrogen explosions and leaking radiation.
A week ago, a huge spike in radioactive cesium was detected in groundwater nearby.
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