TEPCO at final stage in 1st round of fuel transfer
The
operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is preparing to
complete the first transfer of nuclear fuel from a reactor building to a
safer storage pool.
On Thursday, Tokyo Electric Power Company moved
the batch of nuclear fuel from the No. 4 reactor building to a nearby
facility housing the safer pool.
TEPCO workers used a trailer to
carry a cask containing 22 unused fuel assemblies to the building 100
meters away, then unloaded the cask inside the building.
The workers plan to transfer the fuel units from the container to racks in the storage pool on Friday.
This will mark the completion of the first transfer.
TEPCO
says it will review whether there were any problems or challenges. If
not, the utility says it may start removing spent fuel assemblies that
are far more radioactive than the unused fuel.
The pool in the No. 4 reactor building contains more than 1,500 fuel units, most of which are spent fuel rods.
"Cask" containing fuel moved into safer pool
The
operator of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant says it has removed the
first batch of nuclear fuel from the reactor 4 building to a safer
storage pool.
Footage released by Tokyo Electric Power Company on
Thursday shows workers lowering a steel cask containing 22 unused fuel
assemblies from the 5th floor of the reactor building. Engineers used a
huge crane to lower the cask, 5.5 meters long and two meters across,
onto a trailer on the ground.
The container was transferred slowly to
a separate pool in a building 100 meters away, and lowered into water
to store the fuel more safely.
TEPCO plans to begin on Friday
plucking the fuel assemblies out of the cask and placing them in storage
racks inside the pool. The utility says it will review the process
before starting a second round of fuel transfer.
Thursday's transfer
involved unused fuel units. The reactor's storage pool has 1,511 fuel
assemblies left, including 1,331 highly radioactive spent fuel
assemblies.
TEPCO says the building housing the separate pool can
withstand an earthquake as strong as the March 2011 disaster that badly
damaged the plant.
Nov. 21, 2013 - Updated
11:07 UTC
Trial run of last ALPS line at Fukushima resumed
The
operator of Japan's damaged nuclear plant has resumed trial operation
of the last of 3 lines of a key water decontamination system.
Officials
of Tokyo Electric Power Company restarted the 3rd line of the Advanced
Liquid Processing System, or ALPS, at the Fukushima Daiichi plant on
Thursday.
The system is designed to remove from contaminated water 62 kinds of radioactive substances, excluding tritium.
But its test operation was suspended in June following leaks of unprocessed water from a tank due to corrosion.
The utility restarted the lines one by one after working to prevent further corrosion.
The
officials say test runs so far have shown that the system is failing to
fully remove 4 types of radioactive substances, including cobalt and
antimony.
They say they will work to fix the system and confirm the
effects of anti-corrosion measures before making it fully operational
next year. ALPS was originally to be in full operation this autumn.
Tokyo
Electric plans to add more lines to the system so that it will be able
to process all radioactive water in the plant's storage tanks by March
2015.
http://enenews.com/professor-fukushim...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljzXFx...Oregon
Official: Reports coming in of seafood with radioactive contamination,
"They're kind of secretive, they don't want to give up their sources" —
Locals concerned about impact Fukushima disaster is having on area fish
(VIDEO)
http://videos.oregonlive.com/oregonia...The Radioactive Ocean
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marbl...Radionuclides in fishes and mussels from the Farallon Islands Nuclear Waste Dump Site, California.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/86...Fish Anyone? Farallon Islands (and other) Oceanic Radioactive Waste Dumps
Long
before Fukushima dumped millions of gallons of highly radioactive water
into the sea, the oceans have been designated repositories for
radioactive waste and fallout according to reports from the USGS and
articles in the SF Weekly and Mother Jones. -
http://www.defyingdisaster.com/2011/0...America's Nuclear Waste Is Now Even Farther from Finding a Home
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/us-n...Senator Boxer Says Records Possibly Missing On San Onofre
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2013/nov/21/...EPA Radnet
http://www.epa.gov/radnet/radnet-data...The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry
http://nuclear-news.net/ http://www.youtube.com/user/MsMilkyth...
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