.jpg)
Rt -
Workers at the stricken Fukushima facility are set to seal a breach in one of the reactors using concrete. Japan's nuclear officials say highly radioactive water has been seeping through the crack into the Pacific Ocean.
The UN's top nuclear official has warned that the operation to solve the crisis at the site will be prolonged. Meanwhile, Japan's Prime Minister has visited the damaged facility to boost morale among those working there.
Authorities say they do not plan to expand the 20-kilometer evacuation zone, although radiation has been registered 40 kilometers from the facility.
Another serious problem hampering the repair works is contaminated water that has been soaking the basements of the reactor buildings, filling up tunnel-like underground trenches connected to them. Removal of this water is necessary to reduce the risk to workers who are currently struggling to restore the cooling system of the reactors.
Efforts to remove the tainted water from the basements continued on Saturday, Kyodo News reports. To store it, TEPCO – the operator of the troubled Fukushima-1 plant – is considering using an artificial floating island, or “Mega-Float”. The total capacity of its reservoirs exceeds 10,000 tons of water.
The company may also pump inert nitrogen into the containment vessels of the reactors to replace explosive hydrogen, in an effort to prevent the risk of more blasts.
It is not yet clear how much time it would take to implement all that has been planned. The operator still has to continue pouring massive amounts of water into the reactors and the spent nuclear fuel pools in an attempt to cool the rods down. On Saturday, it resumed transferring fresh water to the tanks from a US Navy barge.
On Saturday, for the first time since the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, Prime Minister Naoto Kan visited the devastated areas. He went to the completely destroyed town of Rikudzentakata, where he met the locals who had survived the tsunami and promised them all necessary support from the government.
Posted via http://batavia08.posterous.com batavia08's posterous
No comments:
Post a Comment