![]() Such a plan would be extremely dangerous, given the high levels of radioactivity. Efforts are now being made to devise a method to recycle contaminated water from the reactor basement back into the reactor. Engineers had proposed to flood the primary containment vessel, entombing the damaged fuel in water. The leakage of water has forced TEPCO to devise new plans to stabilise reactor 1. “Without the injection of water, a more disastrous event could have ensued,” TEPCO spokesman Matsumoto admitted. TEPCO began using fire trucks to pump water into the reactor in time to prevent further catastrophic damage. on March 12-that is, just 16 hours after the quake-most of the fuel pellets had melted and fallen to the bottom of the pressure vessel. The temperature soared to 2,800 degrees Centigrade. By 6 p.m., water levels in the pressure vessel were falling, exposing the fuel rods, which were still generating intense heat through radioactive decay. ![]() on March 11, causing the reactor to immediately shut down power production. TEPCO also provided preliminary data showing how quickly the crisis at reactor 1 emerged. Following the disaster, Japanese nuclear authorities lifted the annual maximum dose for nuclear workers to 250 millisieverts from 100 millisieverts, a figure that was already high by international standards. The level of radioactivity inside the building that houses reactor 1 is up to 2,000 millisieverts an hour, which poses an extreme danger to workers. Some of the contaminated water that leaked from reactors 2 and 3 has already flowed into the sea. TEPCO announced on Saturday that it had found around 3,000 tonnes of water in the south-eastern section of the basement of reactor 1, filling it to a level of more than 4 metres. It is now clear that thousands of tonnes of highly radioactive water have been leaking out of the three damaged reactors. As a result, TEPCO has been forced to inject water continuously into the reactors to cool the fuel. The March 11 earthquake and tsunami stopped power supplies to the Fukushima plant, severing its normal cooling systems. 2 and 3.” Each pressure vessel is surrounded by a concrete primary containment vessel, but these also appear to be leaking water from the damaged reactors.ĭuring normal operations, the highly radioactive water in the pressure vessel of a boiling water reactor is turned to steam, drives turbines and then is recycled back into the reactor core. ![]() TEPCO spokesman Junichi Matsumoto said the pressure vessels-steel containers holding the reactor cores-were “likely to be damaged and leaking water at Nos. On Sunday, TEPCO revealed that the cores of two more of the six reactors at the complex-reactors 2 and 3-had probably undergone a similar meltdown. Last week the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), acknowledged that the core of reactor 1 had undergone a meltdown and molten nuclear fuel had burned a hole in the bottom of its pressure vessel. The extent of the damage to the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in north eastern Japan is only gradually emerging as engineers and workers struggle with the complexities of stabilising its stricken reactors. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |