Blackout

I have been looking for (official) information in English all afternoon. Although the blackout at Fukushima Daiichi was announced in the Japanese media on Monday, this is the first article in English that I have found in the media I normally rely on for my blog. And it's not Monday any more in Japan.

March 18, 2013

Blackout halts cooling system at Fukushima plant

      http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20130319_01.html

TEPCO officials say a power blackout has suspended a cooling system for used nuclear fuel at the struggling Fukushima Daiichi power plant.

Operator Tokyo Electric Power Company said the blackout took place shortly before 7 PM on Monday.

The affected system is intended to cool 3 pools containing about 2,100 spent rods from the plant's number 1, 3, and 4 reactors.

Officials reported that at 4 PM they registered temperatures in the pools of up to 25 degrees Celsius.

Temperatures are reportedly rising at 0.1 to 0.3 degrees per hour.

The officials said it will take about 4 days for the pools to exceed 65 degrees -- the firm's limit.

They added the blackout has interrupted the cooling system for another pool containing about 6,300 rods. It has also affected part of a system that disposes of contaminated water.

The TEPCO officials clarified the outage has not hindered the injection of coolant into the crippled reactors.

They also said they have spotted no change in radiation levels at monitoring posts around Fukushima Daiichi.

The officials will reportedly begin restoring the cooling system once they discover the cause of the interruption.

Mar. 18, 2013 - Updated 15:19 UTC (00:19 JST)