Decontamination not working
Plant decontamination not working
The Tokyo Electric Power Company is looking into why a system for decontaminating radioactive water at the Fukushima Daiichi plant is not working as expected, delaying resumption of the system's full-scale operation.
The firm on Wednesday published data showing the amount of radioactive materials that had been removed from contaminated water during a test run of the US-made system.
The data show that density of Cesium-13 and Cesium-137 dropped to only one-100th of initial levels.
An earlier test run using water with a lower density of radioactivity showed a drop to about one-1000th.
The utility had said the system would begin full-scale operation in a couple of days.
TEPCO on Tuesday began reducing the amount of cooling water injected into the plant's No. 1 to 3 reactors and is carefully monitoring changes in their temperatures.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011 21:13 +0900 (
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/22_28.html
More
FUKUSHIMA — Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Tuesday that a pump on its new radioactive water treatment system at the Fukushima No. 1 plant halted automatically during an early morning trial run, freezing up the entire apparatus.
Tepco said it believes the pump, a component developed by France's Areva SA to inject chemicals into the key system to decontaminate radioactive materials, stopped because it was overburdened by excessive liquid flow.
Tepco said it restarted the trial run in the afternoon after adjusting the liquid flow.
Smooth operation of the treatment system, which is designed to remove highly radioactive materials from the massive amount of water accumulating at the power station, is essential to containing the crisis; Tepco plans to eventually recycle the water to cool the plant's damaged reactors.
The new system was also halted Saturday, a day after becoming fully operational, because the radiation level of a cesium-absorbing component developed by Kurion Inc. of the U.S. had reached its limit earlier than expected, the utility said.
Aiming to resume full-scale operation as fast as possible, Tepco conducted a trial run of the system early Tuesday.
The contaminated water accumulating at the reactor facilities, including coolant liquid leaking from damaged reactors, has been diverted elsewhere at the plant to prevent it from overflowing, but the storage locations are nearing full capacity.
Loan more, banks asked
KYODO
Tokyo Electric Power Co. has asked its creditor banks to let it keep borrowing money at low interest rates as it continues to struggle with the Fukushima nuclear crisis, Tepco officials said Tuesday.
Large banks, including main lender Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., are expected to oblige the utility to help it stabilize the electricity supply, sources said.
The major lenders have already agreed to roll over Tepco's short-term debts and will likely do the same for other loans. They are expected to extend the company's loans for another term at interest of less than 1 percent per year, the sources said.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110622a2.html