nuclear-news

Japan’s desperate battle to contain Fukushima’s radioactive water

Japan Nuclear Plant’s Battle to Contain Radioactive Water Tepco Builds Sunken Barrier to Ring-Fence Site, but Water May Have Already Overtopped Wall  WSJ, 6 Aug 13, by  MARI IWATA  and  PHRED DVORAK
To stem the advance of radioactive water to the sea, the operator of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has tried plugs, walls, pumps and chemicals that harden the ground into a solid barrier.

But as Tokyo Electric Power Co. 9501.TO +3.26% prepares this week to start work on a new set of measures that would ring off and cap the area where the most highly contaminated water has been found, some experts and regulators are saying that the battle to completely contain radioactivity to the site of one of the world’s worst nuclear accidents may be a losing one.

In the most recent example of Tepco’s Sisyphean struggle, the company said late last week that rising levels of contaminated groundwater may have already overtopped a sunken barrier that the utility started only a month ago, and wasn’t even expecting to complete until late this week. Tepco’s water-control measures, such as pumping out contaminated water and putting it in storage, are “merely a temporary solution,” said Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority, at a news conference last week. Eventually, “it will be necessary to discharge water” that’s still contaminated into the sea, he said…..

Controlling contaminated water has been a struggle at Fukushima Daiichi ever since the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami knocked out the power at the plant and sent its three active reactors spiraling out of control. Some 400 metric tons of water a day is still being used to cool the melted fuel cores—though much of that water is now recycled. More troubling is another 400 tons a day of groundwater that flows down from hills and mountains into the compound, and toward the sea.

For the past two years, Tepco has been trying to keep the contamination contained by pumping accumulated water out of the highly radioactive reactor buildings, and storing it in tanks on the plant grounds. But the company’s efforts went into overdrive a few months ago, when it found that groundwater sampled near the crippled reactors was showing spiking levels of radioactive elements. It was unclear why. What’s more, Tepco said that the water was likely leaking into the sea.

The continuing problems at the reactor site, including the company’s lack of transparency over the radioactive leaks, have drawn criticism from Japanese regulators….http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323420604578651713545887032.html

August 7, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Fukushima 2013, Japan, water