Grundwater pumping plan starts

April 9, 2014

Groundwater plan begins at Fukushima Daiichi

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20140409_23.html 

Workers started a water management system near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Wednesday. They are pumping up groundwater to prevent it from reaching the crippled facility.

Water flowing under the ground from nearby mountains is seeping into the basements of the reactor buildings, where it mixes with highly radioactive water. The bypass plan was developed to reduce the buildup of contaminated water.

The Japanese government and the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, started the bypass system after fishery cooperatives in Fukushima Prefecture consented to the plan last week.

TEPCO says the groundwater will be pumped up for several days from 12 wells built on a mountainside. The water will be stored at special tanks. Private organizations will test radiation levels over the course of a month. If the levels are below the safety standards set by the government and TEPCO, the water will be released into the nearby Pacific Ocean.

TEPCO says when the system is in full operation, it will reduce the amount of contaminated water at plant by up to 100 tons per day. Currently, the plant has a daily buildup of 400 tons.

Apr. 9, 2014 - Updated 05:45 UTC

Groundwater at Fukushima plant pumped in plan to release it to sea

http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20140409p2g00m0dm060000c.html 

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Tokyo Electric Power Co. on Wednesday started pumping groundwater at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant as part of an operation to direct it into the sea before it gets highly contaminated by passing through the site.

The so-called groundwater bypass system is seen as a key measure to slow the pace of increase of highly radioactive water accumulating at the plant. Local fishermen have agreed to the dumping of groundwater on condition that it is below stringent safety criteria.

Groundwater pumped through wells will be first stored in a tank to check the contamination level. After the safety of the water is confirmed by analysis, which is expected to take about a month, TEPCO will release the water into the Pacific Ocean.

TEPCO will operate the system on the condition that groundwater contains less than 1 becquerel per liter of cesium-134 and cesium-137, 5 becquerels per liter of beta ray-emitting radioactive material and 1,500 becquerels per liter of tritium. The cesium level of rivers nearby is also about 1 becquerel, according to the utility.

Highly radioactive water has been increasing by about 400 tons a day at the plant because the same volume of groundwater is seeping into the basement of reactor buildings and mixing with water used to cool three reactors that suffered meltdowns in the 2011 accident.

TEPCO is installing more tanks so that it will not run out of water storage capacity, but it also wants to stop the total volume of radioactive water from further increasing.

By operating the groundwater bypass system, TEPCO says it can reduce the amount of water seeping into the reactor buildings by up to 100 tons per day.

An official of TEPCO said Tuesday that it cannot currently foresee how frequently the water discharge will take place after the system gets on track.

As a trial, TEPCO has already pumped about 1,100 tons of groundwater and confirmed that its contamination level is below the safety criteria, the official said. The water is kept in tanks, but is also expected to be released.

April 09, 2014(Mainichi Japan)