nuclear-news

State of the Fukushima Reactors

Fukushima  Nuclear Crisis Update for October 2nd to October 4th, 2012 Greenpeace International,  by Christine McCann – October 5, 2012 “…State of the Fukushima Reactors TEPCO has finally installed a new thermometer in the crippled #2 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. The reactor experienced a meltdown in the days following the Fukushima nuclear disaster; since then, five out of six thermometers in the reactor have broken. If the final thermometer broke, the utility would have no way of knowing if the reactor was overheating and in danger of further meltdown. Although they cannot see inside the reactors, workers believe that the new thermometer is near the bottom of the pressure vessel.

The NRA will declare the Fukushima Daiichi plant a “special nuclear facility” in order to oversee stabilization of the plant, as well as its decommissioning. Currently, the agency has no authority over TEPCO’s plans there. NRA Chair Shunichi Tanaka said this week that the Fukushima plant is still unstable, contradicting earlier government reports that operations there had been stabilized.

This week, TEPCO began removing 764 spent fuel rods from reactor #4 at its Fukushima Daini power plant. The Daini plant is located approximately 11 km from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant, where a triple meltdown occurred after power was lost there after last year’s massive earthquake and tsunami. Although a nuclear emergency was also declared at the Daini plant, workers were able to recover cooling systems and avoid meltdowns at the reactors. The utility is moving the rods to a storage pool on upper floors of the building, and eventually plans to follow suit with reactors #1, #2, and #3, a process that will continue through the end of 2014. (Source: NHK) http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/nuclear-reaction/fukushima-nuclear-crisis-update-for-october-2/blog/42456/

October 5, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Fukushima 2012