Japan to shut down Fukushima plants by year's end

[Chris]

Japan says it will shut down reactors at the Fukushima-1 power plant by the end of the year. The announcement comes despite revelations that a natural disaster in March damaged the nuclear facility worse than earlier believed.

Serious troubles continue to beleaguer the operators of the Japanese nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture that was crippled by an earthquake and tsunami. But Prime Minister Naoto Kan told parliament Monday the damaged reactors will be shut down sometime this year.

Kan says the timeline for bringing the four damaged reactors into a state of cold shutdown will not be changed. He insists that will happen in six to nine months.

That timetable is consistent with a plan Tokyo Electric Power Company announced one month ago. But since then it has become apparent that the reactors suffered worse damage than earlier thought. The number one reactor, it is now acknowledged, suffered a meltdown soon after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami devastated northeastern Japan.

Japanese experts say the fuel rods inside the reactor were fully exposed to the air and melted. However, the fuel apparently dropped to the bottom of the containment vessel, preventing it from going into a full meltdown stage.

Recent attempts to keep the reactor cool by filling the containment chamber with water have run into difficulty. The power company, known as TEPCO, says thousands of tons of highly radioactive contaminated water have leaked through holes created by melted fuel into the reactor basement.

Japan Promises to Shut Down Fukushima Reactors By Year's End | East Asia and Pacific | English

 

[editec]

Wonder how much that is going to cost the people of Japan?

 

[Old Rocks]

Japan says it will shut down reactors at the Fukushima-1 power plant by the end of the year. The announcement comes despite revelations that a natural disaster in March damaged the nuclear facility worse than earlier believed.

Serious troubles continue to beleaguer the operators of the Japanese nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture that was crippled by an earthquake and tsunami. But Prime Minister Naoto Kan told parliament Monday the damaged reactors will be shut down sometime this year.

Kan says the timeline for bringing the four damaged reactors into a state of cold shutdown will not be changed. He insists that will happen in six to nine months.

That timetable is consistent with a plan Tokyo Electric Power Company announced one month ago. But since then it has become apparent that the reactors suffered worse damage than earlier thought. The number one reactor, it is now acknowledged, suffered a meltdown soon after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami devastated northeastern Japan.

Japanese experts say the fuel rods inside the reactor were fully exposed to the air and melted. However, the fuel apparently dropped to the bottom of the containment vessel, preventing it from going into a full meltdown stage.

Recent attempts to keep the reactor cool by filling the containment chamber with water have run into difficulty. The power company, known as TEPCO, says thousands of tons of highly radioactive contaminated water have leaked through holes created by melted fuel into the reactor basement.
Japan Promises to Shut Down Fukushima Reactors By Year's End | East Asia and Pacific | English

Hmmm....... Ol' Walleyes and BiPolar were so insistant that this could not happen.

 

[waltky]

Japan loses two more reactors...

TEPCO confirms meltdowns at two more reactors
Wed, May 25, 2011 - The operator of the nuclear power plant at the center of a radiation scare after being disabled by Japan’s March 11 earthquake and tsunami confirmed yesterday that there had been meltdowns of fuel rods at three of its reactors.

Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said meltdowns of fuel rods at three reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant occurred early in the crisis triggered by the earthquake. The government and outside experts had said previously that fuel rods at three of the plant’s six reactors had likely melted early in the crisis, but the utility, also known as TEPCO, had only confirmed a meltdown at the No. 1 reactor. TEPCO officials said a review since early this month of data from the plant concluded the same happened to reactors No. 2 and No. 3. The preliminary finding, which was reported to Japan’s nuclear safety agency, represents part of an initial effort to explain how events at Fukushima spiraled out of control early in the crisis.

Also yesterday, the government appointed Yotaro Hatamura, a Tokyo University professor of engineering who has studied how complex systems and designs fail, to head a committee that will investigate the cause and handling of the nuclear crisis. The moves came as a team of investigators from the International Atomic Energy Agency began a two-week visit to Japan to prepare a report on the accident to be submitted to the UN agency next month. Some analysts said the delay in confirming the meltdowns at -Fukushima suggested the utility feared touching off a panic by disclosing the severity of the accident earlier. “Now people are used to the situation. Nothing is resolved, but normal business has resumed in places like Tokyo,” said Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Tokyo’s Sophia University.

Nakano said that by confirming the meltdowns now, TEPCO might be hoping the news will have less impact. The word “meltdown” has such a strong connotation that when the situation was more uncertain more people would likely have fled Tokyo, he said. Engineers are battling to plug radiation leaks and bring the plant 240km northeast of Tokyo under control more than two months after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and deadly tsunami that devastated a vast swathe of Japan’s northeast coastline and tipped the economy into recession. The disaster has triggered a drop of more than 80 percent in TEPCO’s share price and forced the company to seek government aid as it faces compensation liabilities that some analysts say could top US$100 billion. Japanese Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Banri Kaieda said the government would approve the formation of a committee later yesterday that would make sure TEPCO follows through with restructuring plans.

TEPCO officials said damage to the No. 2 reactor fuel rods had begun three days after the quake, with much of the fuel rods eventually melting and collecting at the bottom of the pressure vessel containing them. Fuel rods in the No. 3 reactor were damaged by the afternoon of March 13, they said. The TEPCO officials repeated that the tsunami had disabled power to the reactors and knocked out their cooling capability. Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the government’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, expressed a similar view.

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[waltky]

Granny wantin' to know who gonna clean up the spill?...

Tonnes of toxic water leaking from Fukushima
Jun 29, 2011

Tonnes of radioactive water were discovered on Tuesday to have leaked into the ground from Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant, the latest in a series of leaks at the plant damaged in a March earthquake and tsunami, the country's nuclear watchdog said.

More than three months after the disaster, authorities are struggling to bring under control damaged reactors at the power plant, 240 km north of Tokyo. About 15 tonnes of water with a low level of radiation leaked from a storage tank at the plant on the Pacific coast, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said. Tepco said it was investigating the cause of the leak which was later repaired.

Source