Japan's Crippled Atomic Plant

Japan Considers Entombing Nuclear Plant as Workers Fight to Stop Radiation

March 30, 2011

Bloomberg - Japan will consider entombing its crippled atomic plant in concrete as workers grapple to reduce radiation and contain the worst nuclear disaster in 25 years.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano today ruled out the possibility that two of the six reactors at the Fukushima Dai- Ichi plant would ever be salvaged.

“Given the whole situation, the objective circumstances, it is obvious,” Edano said when asked about reactors 5 and 6, which were offline at the time of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami and so weren’t rendered inoperable. “The public perception is fairly clear.”

About 600 workers, firefighters and soldiers have averted the threat of a total meltdown by injecting water into damaged reactors for the past two weeks. Engineers have connected the complex’s six units with the power grid and two are using temporary motor-driven pumps. While technicians are trying to repair monitoring and cooling systems, the work has been hampered by discoveries of hazardous radioactive water.

The government hasn’t ruled out pouring concrete over the whole facility as one way to shutting it down, Edano said. Dumping concrete on the plant would serve a second purpose: it would trap contaminated water, said Tony Roulstone, an atomic engineer who directs the University of Cambridge’s masters program in nuclear energy.

“They need to immobilize this water and they need something to soak it up,” he said by phone today. “You don’t want to create another hazard, but you need to get it away from the reactors.”

Toxic Water

Record high readings of contaminated sea water were found near the plant. Radioactive iodine rose to 3,355 times the regulated safety limit yesterday afternoon from 2,572 times earlier in the day, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for Japan’s nuclear safety agency. No fishing is occurring nearby so there is no threat, he said.

The three reactors all lost their roofs following explosions and fires in the days following the magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami, which knocked out power and backup systems used to cool nuclear fuel.

Among proposals being considered to contain the disaster, Japan may use a special fabric to cover three reactors to curb the spread of toxic radiation in the air.

Robots

Crews are also considering pumping radioactive water in the reactor buildings to a tanker for safe storage. The U.S. has transported robots impervious to radiation and their operators to the plant at Japan’s request, Peter Lyons, acting assistant secretary of the U.S. Energy Department, told a congressional panel yesterday.

Fukushima plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it can’t rule out the possibility that water may have flowed into the sea from underground trenches outside the reactor buildings.

Work to drain radioactive water from the basement of the No. 1 reactor turbine building was halted because a storage tank is full, Kazuyo Yamanaka, a manager at the power utility, said today. Tokyo Electric plans to move the contaminated water into a condenser within the same building.

The level of contaminated water in the basement of the No. 1 reactor turbine building has been reduced by half to 20 centimeters (7.9 inches), Nishiyama said.

Water in a tunnel outside the No. 2 reactor emitted radiation exceeding 1 sievert an hour, a Tokyo Electric spokesman said. Exposure to that dose for 30 minutes would trigger nausea, and four hours’ exposure might lead to death within two months, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Intolerable Conditions

“Workers can’t work near water with radiation levels exceeding 1 sievert per hour, at least not within a few meters,” said Hironobu Unesaki, a professor at Kyoto University’s Research Reactor Institute. “They may need to remotely remove water or rotate workers for very short periods of time.”

Tokyo Electric Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata apologized for the nuclear crisis today and said the power company will do all it can to prevent the catastrophe from worsening. Katsumata took charge of the utility after President Masataka Shimizu, 66, was admitted to a hospital for high blood pressure.

Dai-Ichi reactors 1 to 4 will be decommissioned after they are stabilized, Katsumata said. Edano announced the closure of all six units at the same news conference.

5-Year Cleanup

Cleanup probably will take at least five years because of the time needed for radioactivity to diminish so experts can assess the damage, Akira Tokuhiro, a professor of mechanical and nuclear engineering at the University of Idaho, said in an interview. That assessment will determine whether the reactors should be entombed or dismantled to eliminate any further radiation risk, he said.

Smoke seen at the No. 1 reactor of the nearby Fukushima Dai-Ni nuclear power plant wasn’t caused by a fire but by a minor problem with equipment, a spokesperson for Tokyo Electric Power Co. said, citing the local fire department. The smoke was seen rising near the plant at 5.57 p.m. today and disappeared shortly after, Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said at a news conference today.

The number of dead and missing from the earthquake and tsunami had reached 27,652 as of 9 p.m., Japan’s National Police Agency said.

New Shocking Video Of The Japanese Tsunami by timbarracuda

TEPCO President Hospitalized in Tokyo

March 30, 2011

AP - The president of the utility that owns Japan's tsunami-damaged nuclear complex was hospitalized with hypertension as setbacks mounted at the plant, where experts Wednesday logged the highest radiation yet in nearby seawater.

Masataka Shimizu, president of Tokyo Electric Power Co., has not been seen for nearly two weeks after appearing at a Tokyo news conference two days after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that hobbled the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant's cooling systems and set off radiation leaks.

Shimizu, 66, was taken Tuesday to a Tokyo hospital after suffering dizziness and high blood pressure, TEPCO spokesman Naoki Tsunoda said.

There had been much speculation about Shimizu's health since he disappeared from public view, with company Vice President Sakae Muto appearing instead at news briefings. TEPCO officials had deflected questions about Shimizu's health, saying he was "resting" at company headquarters.

It was the latest crisis to beset TEPCO, still struggling to stabilize the dangerously overheated power plant and to contain the radiation seeping from the complex and into the sea and soil nearby. The magnitude-9.0 quake spawned a tsunami that knocked out power and backup systems crucial to keeping temperatures down inside the plant's reactors and spent fuel pools.

Elevated levels of radiation, meanwhile, has turned up in vegetables, raw milk and water. Last week, tap water as far away as Tokyo, 140 miles (220 kilometers) to the south, contained levels of cancer-causing iodine-131 considered unsafe for infants.

On Wednesday, nuclear safety officials said seawater outside the plant was found to contain 3,335 times the usual amount of radioactive iodine — the highest rate yet and a sign that more contaminated water was making its way into the ocean.

The amount of iodine-131 found offshore some 300 yards (meters) south of the plant does not pose an immediate threat to human health but was a "concern," Hidehiko Nishiyama, a Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency official, said Wednesday.

He said there was no fishing in the area.

"We will nail down the cause, and will do our utmost to prevent it from rising further," he said. Nishiyama has previously acknowledged that some contaminated water from the plant was seeping into the sea, but it remains unclear what part of the plant is leaking.

Highly toxic plutonium also has been found seeping into the soil outside the plant, TEPCO said. Safety officials said the amounts did not pose a risk to humans, but the finding supports suspicions that dangerously radioactive water is leaking from damaged nuclear fuel rods.

The latest findings on radioactive iodine — based on a sample taken Tuesday afternoon — highlight the urgency of stabilizing the crippled power plant. The mission has been fraught with setbacks, as emergency crews have dealt with fires, explosions and radiation scares in the frantic bid to prevent a complete meltdown.

Workers succeeded last week in reconnecting some parts of the plant to the power grid. But as they pumped in water to cool the reactors and nuclear fuel, they discovered numerous pools of radioactive water, including in the basements of several buildings and in trenches outside.

The contaminated water has been emitting many times the amount of radiation that the government considers safe for workers. It must be pumped out before electricity can be restored and the regular cooling systems powered up.

That has left officials struggling with two crucial but contradictory efforts: pumping in water to keep the fuel rods cool and pumping out contaminated water.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan reiterated in a speech this week to parliament that Japan was grappling with its worst problems since World War II.

More than 11,000 bodies have been recovered, but officials say the final death toll is expected to exceed 18,000. Hundreds of thousands of people remain homeless, their homes and livelihoods destroyed. Damage could amount to $310 billion — the most expensive natural disaster on record.

Kan has faced increasing criticism from opposition lawmakers over the handling of a nuclear disaster stretching into a third week.