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Contaminated Fukushima Water Storage Tanks “Close To Capacity”, TEPCO Admits

May 21, 2018

Contaminated Fukushima Water Storage Tanks “Close To Capacity”, TEPCO Admits

The Tokyo Electric Power Company is running out of container space to store water contaminated by tritium outside the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, and it’s also running out of room for building more tanks, according to Yomiuri Shimbum, a Japanese newspaper, which is creating an intractable problem for the utility, which has been tasked with supervising the cleanup of Fukushima.

The Japanese government has been desperately trying to accelerate the cleanup ahead of the upcoming 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo – and it’s a miracle it hasn’t run into this issue sooner. TEPCO is still struggling with how to dispose of the tritium-tainted water. Options discussed have included dumping it into the ocean, but that proposal has angered local fishing communities.

Fukushima

At some point, TEPCO and the government will need to make a difficult decision. Until then, ground water will continue to seep into the ruined reactor, where it becomes contaminated. Afterward, TEPCO can treat the contaminated water to purify it, but they can’t remove the tritium, which is why the supply of water contaminated with tritium continues to grow.

As one government official pointed out, Japan can’t simply store the radioactive water forever. As of now, the company should be able to store water until 2020.

Efforts have been made to increase storage capacity by constructing bigger tanks when the time comes for replacing the current ones. But a senior official of the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry said, “Operation of tanks is close to its capacity.”

TEPCO plans to secure 1.37 million tons of storage capacity by the end of 2020, but it has not yet decided on a plan for after 2021. Akira Ono, chief decommissioning officer of TEPCO, said, “It is impossible to continue to store [treated water] forever.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fukushima leaks radioactive water after Typhoon Etau busts drainage system

September 11, 2015

Fukushima leaks radioactive water after Typhoon Etau busts drainage system

Tokyo Electric Power CO. (TEPCO) informed the public today that hundreds of tons of radioactive water had leaked from the facility, but maintained that the incident posed no risk to the environment. Large quantities of contaminated water need to be stored in special reservoirs that were used to cool melted fuel rods from reactors at the TEPCO site, which was damaged by the earthquake and tsunami of 2011.

TEPCO had acknowledged the risk of the typhoon to the nuclear site on Tuesday, outlining the preventative measures it was taking.

Fukushima leaks radioactive water after Typhoon Etau busts drainage system

© Toru Hanai
© Toru Hanai / Reuters
Flooding from Typhoon Etau has caused new leaks of contaminated water to flow from the Fukushima nuclear power station into the ocean. The incident came after a rush of water overwhelmed the site’s drainage pumps.

Typhoon Etau brought lashing rains, floods and storm winds to Japan. Tens of thousands of Japanese people have been ordered to leave their homes across the country.

 

RT ✔@RT_com

Freak floods: Houses swept away, people trapped on roofs, 170k evacuated (VIDEOS) http://on.rt.com/6qyz 

Tokyo Electric Power CO. (TEPCO) informed the public today that hundreds of tons of radioactive water had leaked from the facility, but maintained that the incident posed no risk to the environment. Large quantities of contaminated water need to be stored in special reservoirs that were used to cool melted fuel rods from reactors at the TEPCO site, which was damaged by the earthquake and tsunami of 2011.

TEPCO had acknowledged the risk of the typhoon to the nuclear site on Tuesday, outlining the preventative measures it was taking.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fukushima May Be At Risk Of Imminent “Hydrogen Explosion”

May 27, 2015

Fukushima May Be At Risk Of Imminent “Hydrogen Explosion”

Containers holding contaminated water at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant are at risk of hydrogen explosions, The Telegraph reports, with 10% of them found to be leaking. The discovery was reported to the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA), which raised concerns surrounding the potential hazards of accumulated hydrogen building up in the containers warning that “a spark caused by static electricity could cause a container to explode.” TEPCO officials reassuringly note that they “think the possibility of an occurrence of hydrogen explosion from these storage facilities is extremely low, since there is no fire origin, or anything that generates static electricity nearby,” but this is the same company that a recent IAEA report blasted for “failing to implement adequate safeguards at Fukushima – despite being aware of the tsunami risk.”

Leaking containers at Japan’s embattled Fukushima nuclear power plant are at risk of possible hydrogen explosions, experts have claimed. As The Telegraph reports,

Almost 10 per cent of recently inspected containers holding contaminated water at the nuclear plant in northeast Japan were found to be leaking radioactive water.

The leakages, discovered during inspections by Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), the operators of the plant, were thought to be caused by a build-up of hydrogen and other gases due to radiation contamination.

The discovery was reported to the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA), which raised concerns surrounding the potential hazards of accumulated hydrogen building up in the containers.

“If the concentration level is high, a spark caused by static electricity could cause a container to explode,” one NRA official told the Asahi Shimbun.

Tepco officials made the discovery while inspecting 278 of the plant’s 1,307 containers and found that 26 – close to ten per cent – had a leakage or overspill from their lids.

It is believed that gases had accumulated in the sediment at the base of the containers, prompting the volume of the liquid to expand and resulting in the overflow.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

 

 

TEPCO Admits Delaying Report Of Major Radiation Leak Into The Pacific Ocean For 10 Months

February 26, 2015

TEPCO Admits Delaying Report Of Major Radiation Leak Into The Pacific Ocean For 10 Months

While faith in Japanese ‘economics’ is starting to falter (borne out by the split in the BoJ and endless macro data disappointments), trust in TEPCO and its governmental operators must be about to hit a new record low. Having promised and given up on the ice-wall strategy to stop radioactive water leaking into the ocean, Bloomberg reports TEPCO officials have admitted that it’s investigating the cause of a spike in radiation levels (23,000 becquerels/liter vs the legal limit of 90) in drainage water that it believes subsequently leaked into the Pacific ocean from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant. The bigger problem, as NBC reports, TEPCO failed to report the leak for 10 months!

The radioactivity increase was ‘reported’ on Sunday, the company said in an e-mail yesterday, and as Bloomberg reports,

No workers were exposed and tests of radiation levels in sea water in the port adjacent to the plant showed no significant increase, the company said.

Ocean water tests will be increased to daily sampling from weekly as it investigates the leak, it added.

Rainwater is believed to have become contaminated through contact with radioactive substances and then flowed into drainage ditches, a spokesperson for the Tokyo-based company said today by phone, asking not to be named because of company policy. The company is unable to estimate the size of the radioactive water leak, the person said.

Tepco, as the company is known, detected 23,000 becquerels per liter of cesium 137, from rainwater accumulated on the roof of the No. 2 reactor building, the utility said yesterday in a statement. The legal limit for releasing cesium 137 is 90 becquerels per liter.

…

Tepco has had repeated failures in stemming radioactive water leaks at the plant since it had three reactor meltdowns almost four years ago following an earthquake and tsunami.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

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