By Michio Nakayama, Tsuyoshi Inajima, and Yuji Okada
Too late ..
April 14 (Bloomberg) -- Tokyo Electric Power Co. will move backup generators at its crippled nuclear plant to higher ground away from the sea to ensure cooling systems aren’t disrupted by future tsunamis, as aftershocks rattle Japan.
“Emergency diesel-powered generators will be moved to higher ground, and work for connecting them into the power distribution unit will be carried out around April 19,” Takeo Iwamoto, a spokesman for the utility known as Tepco, said in Tokyo today. They will be placed 20 meters (66 feet) above sea level, double the current height, according to the company.
Backup generators and cooling systems at the Fukushima Dai- Ichi station were knocked out by a 15 meter surge following a magnitude-9 earthquake on March 11, triggering the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. Explosions occurred as water in the reactors and spent-fuel ponds boiled away, and radiation leaked into the air and sea.
Tepco has been pouring millions of liters of water to cool the reactors and spent fuel after the accident, which has flooded basements and trenches near the reactors. Some highly contaminated water leaked into the sea and the utility has dumped less toxic fluids into the ocean.
Tepco will install silt fences near the sea water intakes of reactors No. 1 and 2 to prevent the flow of contaminants to the ocean, Japan’s nuclear safety agency said at a separate briefing today. The utility said yesterday it was placing the fabric curtains at the No. 3 and 4 units. The power station has six reactors.
Contaminated Water
The water level in a trench outside the No. 2 reactor rose even as Tepco was draining the liquid, possibly because coolant spilled over from the unit, Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director- general of the safety agency, said at a news conference streamed over the Internet.
Tepco had transferred 660 cubic meters (174,000 gallons) of the radioactive water to a condenser in the unit’s turbine building as of 5:04 p.m. yesterday, Nishiyama said. Water from the trench will eventually be moved to a waste-processing building, he said.
Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency this week raised the severity rating of the accident to 7, the highest on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale and the same level as the Chernobyl disaster.
The ranking was increased from 5, the same as the 1979 partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. Each step on the scale represents a 10-fold increase in severity.
The Fukushima station is yet to stabilize and the reactors must be kept cool to prevent the crisis from deteriorating, Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said at a Senate hearing April 12.
Aftershocks, Fuel Rods
Efforts to restore cooling systems at the Fukushima plant have been hindered as aftershocks forced workers to evacuate periodically. Crews were still using temporary pumps for reactor cooling yesterday, and used a cement-pumping truck to spray water into a damaged spent-fuel pool, Tepco said in a statement.
Four temblors stronger than magnitude-5 struck eastern Japan today, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
A total of 238 workers, including 39 subcontractors, were deployed at the station as of 6:30 a.m. today, according to information posted at Tepco’s media center.
The utility said most of the fuel rods in the spent fuel pool of the No. 4 reactor are undamaged. Higher-than-normal levels of radioactive iodine and cesium in a water sample taken on April 12 show some of the rods may have been damaged, Tsuyoshi Makigami, a spokesman, said today.
--Editors: Amit Prakash, Aaron Sheldrick
To contact the reporters on this story: Michio Nakayama in Tokyo at mnakayama4@bloomberg.net; Tsuyoshi Inajima in Tokyo at tinajima@bloomberg.net; Yuji Okada in Tokyo at yokada6@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Amit Prakash at aprakash1@bloomberg.net
Thanks for all the pictures, my heart hangs for the many people who have and are still suffering so, and to the cats and dogs and other animals who have found themselves so sadly alone.
An extra special hats off to the workers still risking their lives.
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