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Tepco Says Damaged Fukushima Nuclear Plant Was Hit by a 15-Meter Tsunami

By Yuji Okada and Aaron Sheldrick - Apr 9, 2011 10:54 PM CT

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the tsunami generated by last month’s earthquake was as high as 15 meters at its crippled nuclear station, which has been leaking radiation since the surge knocked out backup power systems.

The utility offered its first assessment of the damage from the tsunami since the March 11 quake, after criticism from the government and evacuees that it was slow in responding to the disaster. The base of the station is about 10 meters (33 feet) above sea level.

“Most of the area around the reactor buildings and turbine housings was swamped,” the utility known as Tepco said in a statement late yesterday.

Almost one month since the disaster, Tepco is still using emergency equipment to try to cool reactors damaged at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi station north of Tokyo after mains electricity was knocked out. The company is trying to prevent further explosions of hydrogen released by reactors after blasts damaged containment structures, releasing radiation into the air and sea.

Tepco plans to start transferring high-level radioactive water in a trench at the station’s No. 2 reactor to a condenser this afternoon.

“We aim to drain the contaminated water away immediately as the level has risen to less than one meter below the top of the trench,” said Teruaki Kobayashi, the head of the company’s nuclear maintenance group, today in Tokyo.

60,000 Tons
About 60,000 tons of contaminated water lies in the basements of turbine buildings and trenches around the No. 1, 2 and 3 reactors, the company said last week. Tepco needs to drain the water to restore reactor cooling systems in the turbine buildings.

“Work to restore the cooling systems is lagging behind because it’s taking longer than expected to drain radioactive water from the basements,” Hironobu Unesaki, a nuclear engineering professor at Kyoto University, said yesterday.

The utility plans to begin using a remotely controlled helicopter to investigate conditions at the nuclear station today, a day behind schedule because of bad weather, Naoki Tsunoda, a spokesman for the utility, said yesterday.

Tepco said on April 8 that the station, which has six reactors and is about 220 kilometers north of Tokyo, wasn’t further damaged by a magnitude-7.1 aftershock on April 7.

Record Quake
The March 11 earthquake, Japan’s strongest on record, and tsunami left more than 27,700 dead or missing as of 10 a.m. Tokyo time yesterday, according to Japan’s National Police Agency. The government estimated the damage at 25 trillion yen ($295 billion).

Fifteen engineers were able to return to the nuclear plant site after the April 7 quake. They continue to pump nitrogen into one of the reactors, part of an effort to prevent hydrogen explosions at the plant, Tokyo Electric said.

There have been no indications of plant damage at Fukushima Dai-Ichi or changes in radiation levels, Takashi Kurita, a company spokesman, said on April 8.

Tokyo Electric’s stock has fallen 80 percent since the close on March 10, the day before the disaster. The shares rose 80 yen, or 24 percent, to 420 yen on April 8, its biggest gain since 1974.

To contact the reporters on this story: Yuji Okada in Tokyo at [e-mail]; Aaron Sheldrick in Tokyo at [e-mail].
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Tighe at [e-mail]

©2011 BLOOMBERG L.P.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-10/tepco-says-damaged-fukushima-nuclear-plant-was-hit-by-a-15-meter-tsunami.html


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Japan tsunami wave smashes into nuclear plant

Uploaded by itnnews on Apr 9, 2011

New footage has been released of the moment Japan's tsunami hit the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ3IgHQuCBM


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