Japan > Nuclear Plant Reactor Structure Opened to Personnel

Third Japan Plant Reactor Structure Opened to Personnel

Thursday, May 19, 2011

image courtesy of  gc.nautilus.org

Personnel on Wednesday moved inside the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant's No. 3 reactor site for the first time since a March earthquake and tsunami devastated the Japanese facility, Reuters reported (see GSN, May 18).

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power dispatched two workers who remained in the building for 10 minutes and received under three millisieverts of radiation in that period. Plant personnel have been battling to prevent new radiation releases from the six-reactor facility, both by restoring critical cooling systems and implementing measures to help prevent additional hydrogen explosions. The March 11 events left more than 20,000 people dead or missing in Japan.

Personnel previously ventured into the outer structures of the plant's No. 1 and No. 2 reactors, the other two segments of the plant that were active at the start of the crisis (Reuters I, May 19).

"Workers being able to enter the reactors is perhaps the biggest improvement" since Tokyo Electric Power announced the schedule for bringing plant components under control, one atomic power specialist told Reuters. "They have made the ventilation of the reactor building possible and it also enables [Tokyo Electric Power] to install heat exchangers and pumps" (Reuters II, May 19).

The plant is due on Friday to receive a massive steel containment system for holding 10,000 metric tons of radiation-tainted fluid that has flooded parts of the facility, hindering restoration efforts, the operator said. In excess of 90,000 metric tons of irradiated liquid is thought to be pooling within and near the site (Reuters I).

The discovery of additional damage to plant components has forced the firm to dramatically revise its site stabilization strategy, which now includes the planned installation of technology to reinsert leaked reactor coolant into the systems, the Asahi Shimbun reported. Tokyo Electric Power, though, says it remains on schedule to put the site into "cold shutdown" five to eight months from now.

The company must also contend with the threat of contaminated fluid seeping into the earth or the Pacific Ocean (Eisuke Sasaki, Asahi Shimbun I, May 19).

Tokyo is permitting the International Atomic Energy Agency to dispatch a team to gather information on the crisis, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said on Tuesday. The U.N. group is expected to include roughly 20 atomic experts (Asahi Shimbun II, May 19).

China and Japan are due on Friday to hold their first bilateral meeting of atomic specialists to address the crisis, Kyodo News reported (Kyodo News, May 19)
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