TEPCO to reuse tanks holding radioactively contaminated water at Fukushima plant

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) will reuse highly contaminated tanks at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant to store radioactively contaminated water after treatment, company sources said.

The company will return contaminated water to flange-type tanks that had held such water after removing radioactive materials from the water using the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS). This is because TEPCO has failed to prevent contaminated water from being generated on the premises of the plant or to secure enough storage tanks to hold treated water.

TEPCO had submitted the reuse plan to the Nuclear Regulation Authority, which approved it on July 6 or earlier. TEPCO is set to begin reusing contaminated tanks as early as this month.

Flange-type tanks are assembled by tightening multiple steel plates with bolts. Since such tanks have higher risks of leaking contaminated water, TEPCO is gradually replacing them with tanks assembled by welding steel plates together.

TEPCO is trying to freeze underground soil to surround reactor buildings at the Fukushima power plant to prevent underground water from flowing beneath them and becoming contaminated with radioactive materials.

However, as the efforts have proven ineffective, the utility has decided to reuse flange-type tanks, which it had initially planned to dismantle.

Massive amounts of water are flowing onto the premises of reactor buildings at the atomic power station, generating some 400 tons of radioactively contaminated water a day. TEPCO uses ALPS to purify contaminated water, but the system cannot remove radioactive tritium.

The power company has stored the treated water mainly in welded-type tanks. There are already 1,000 water tanks on the premises of the power station.

http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20160707/p2a/00m/0na/003000c

July 7, 2016 - Posted by dunrenard | Fukushima 2016 | Contaminated Water, Fukushima Daiichi, Tepco, Water Tanks

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Why Nuclear is NOT a Solution to Climate Change

No to Nuclear Power petition

We, the undersigned, call on theUK Government to:

• Cancel all plans for new reactors,

• Phase out all nuclear power production,

• Commit to developing an energy system based on renewable energy.

Major disasters at Windscale, Chernobyl and Fukushima show the dangers associated with nuclear reactors while studies reveal their routine operation leads to increased local child leukaemia. They produce large volumes of radioactive waste, much of which will remain dangerous for millennia to come. And nuclear power and nuclear weapons industries are inextricably linked: nuclear power grew out of the nuclear weapons programme.

The costs of new nuclear are extremely high and rising, compared with the low costs of the renewables which continue to decline. Yet the Government gives large subsidies to nuclear not the renewables.

We need safe, healthy, inexpensive, and sustainable energy sources, not the dangerous diversion of nuclear power. Renewable energy offers a clear alternative to nuclear. Sign here: https://cnduk.org/actions/no-to-nuclear-power-petition/