information about Fukushima published in English in Japanese media info publiée en anglais dans la presse japonaise
19 Mars 2013
March 19, 2013
AP
Four fuel storage pools at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant have been without fresh cooling water for more than 15 hours due to a power outage, but Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Tuesday morning it was trying to repair a broken switchboard that might have caused the problem.
Tepco said pool temperatures were well within safe levels at Fukushima No. 1, and the pools would remain safe for at least four days without fresh cooling water.
The utility was preparing a backup system in case the repairs didn’t fix the problem, Tepco official Masayuki Ono told reporters.
“If worse comes to worst, we have a backup water injection system,” said Ono.
The command center at the plant suffered a brief power outage before 7 p.m. Monday. Electricity was quickly restored to the center but not to equipment pumping water into the fuel pools.
The utility was investigating the cause of the power outage and believes it might be due to problems with the switchboard it is now trying to repair. At the same time, the utility is preparing to connect another switchboard if repairs cannot fix the problem.
The temperature in the four pools had risen slightly, but was well below the utility’s target control temperature of 65 degrees, Tepco said.
The spent-fuel pool for reactor 4, which contains spent and new fuel rods, had risen to 30.5 degrees as of 10 a.m. Tuesday from 25 degrees before the power outage. A common pool storing spent fuel for all reactors was at 28.6 degrees, while the reactor 1 pool was at 17.1 degrees and reactor 3 was at 15.9 degrees.
Tepco said the reactors were unaffected and no other abnormalities were found.
The March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami destroyed the plant’s power and cooling systems, causing three reactor cores to melt down and fuel storage pools to overheat. The plant is now using makeshift systems.
Kyodo
FUKUSHIMA – Fukushima Prefecture residents expressed anxiety Monday after a power outage left three fuel storage pools without fresh cooling water for hours at the disaster-hit Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
Masahide Matsumoto, mayor of Katsurao village, which was evacuated after the outbreak of the nuclear crisis in March 2011, said the incident came at a sensitive time, as evacuation zones were set to be reclassified Friday, with some residents granted permission to make day trips to their homes.
“We will be in trouble unless Tokyo Electric Power Co. properly investigates the cause (of the outage) and restores power,” Matsumoto said, citing growing concerns among residents.
A 27-year-old housewife in the city of Fukushima said, “I am very worried because I have a baby. I want the information to be disclosed as quickly as possible because it will be difficult to evacuate promptly if (an emergency occurs) at night.”
The power outage occurred just before 7 p.m. and was made public by the Nuclear Regulation Authority three hours later.
Takashi Haga, a 49-year-old office worker in the city, appeared surprised by the latest incident.
“It revived the memory of the nuclear accident two years ago,” Haga said. “I thought it was under control.”
At the Fukushima prefectural government office, four staff members at a nuclear safety division received information from Tepco and communicated with local municipal officials. The staffers appeared relatively calm, with one of them saying, “We want Tepco to pin down the cause and respond to the situation.”
Makoto Yanagida, a representative of the “Tanpoposha” (No Nukes Plaza Tokyo) antinuclear group said, “It’s just nonsense that a power company is hit by a blackout. We need to be vigilant, though, to see if Tepco is going to make public what really happened.”
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Monday a problem with electric power has occurred at its crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, leading to the suspension of the system to cool spent fuel pools of the Nos. 1, 3 and 4 units.
The incident, however, so far has not affected the ongoing water injection to the Nos. 1 to 3 reactors, which suffered core meltdowns in the early days of the March 2011 nuclear crisis, according to the Nuclear Regulation Authority.
No abnormality has been detected in radiation levels in areas surrounding the plant in Fukushima Prefecture.
According to the NRA, Tepco reported to regulators that electricity went out at the plant’s accident response center at about 6:57 p.m. Monday.
The power outage at the center was temporary and power to it was soon restored. But Tepco and the NRA were unable to specify immediately why power to the spent fuel pool cooling systems of the three units remains halted.
According to Tepco, the temperatures of the water inside the spent fuel pools of the Nos. 1, 3 and 4 units was between 13.7 C and 25 C at 4 p.m. Monday.
Tepco says that it would take four or five days until the water inside the spent fuel tank at the No. 4 reactor building exceeded 65 C, a temperature level that should not be exceeded.
The No. 4 spent fuel pool, located atop a building damaged by a hydrogen explosion, stores a total of 1,533 fuel assemblies.
The electricity trouble has also led to suspended operation of a facility to clean radioactive water accumulating at the plant, as well as a cooling system at another pool located inside a different building at the site which contains 6,377 fuel assemblies.
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