Japan’s TEPCO — operator of the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant — is about to flip the switch on its infamous ‘ice wall’ intended to divert flowing groundwater around its crippled reactors and thus stem groundwater contamination at the site. The widely mischaracterized and maligned installation—which is a barrier of frozen soil rather than a wall of ice—has every chance of delivering the hoped for results, according to radiation cleanup experts at U.S. national laboratories and feedback from initial system tests. “The frozen barrier is going to work,” predicts Brian Looney, senior advisory engineer at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina and co-author of an independent assessment of TEPCO’s frozen barrier. Continue reading “Startup Time for Fukushima’s Frozen Wall”
Tag: TEPCO
Glimmers of Hope in Japan or Wishful Thinking?
For those looking for hope amidst the nuclear threat afflicting post-Tsunami Japan, there are some glimmers of possibly positive developments to report from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex:
- Japanese authorities say that water canons and aerial water drops from helicopters may have stabilized reactor 3 and its fuel pool (video below). Of Fukushima Daiichi’s six reactors this was viewed as the most dangerous Continue reading “Glimmers of Hope in Japan or Wishful Thinking?”
Spent Nuclear Fuel Biting Back at Fukushima
An explosion earlier today at Japan’s crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant could indicate that the primary containment vessels protecting two of its reactors have now been breached. And yet, stunningly, that was not the day’s worst news. Instead concern increasingly focused on the plant’s highly radioactive spent fuel rods, stored in cooling pools above the reactors.
Damage sustained from last week’s massive earthquake and tsunami as well as subsequent fires and hydrogen explosions have critically limited plant operator Tokyo Electric Power’s ability to maintain cooling in several of the plants’ pools or even to replace water that is evaporating or boiling away. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman Gregory Jaczko told a Senate panel this afternoon that one of the pools was empty and that heating of the fuel bundles could thus melt them down—an outcome that could spread radioactive elements far beyond the site. Continue reading “Spent Nuclear Fuel Biting Back at Fukushima”
Peter Fairley 