TEPCO achieved the reduction by building a bypass system that pumps up the groundwater on the landside of the plant, filters and checks it, then dumps it into the sea. Though 150 tons of inflowing groundwater may sound enormous, this is actually down from a previous 400 tons that streamed in daily. One possible option, he noted, was using evaporation to get rid of the water, which would presumably leave the Tritium behind for collection and storage. He added that the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has “established a task force to look into the problem, and we will work with them on this.” “Tritium is very difficult to remove,” said Masuda. The stored water, while filtered and largely decontaminated, still contains tritium-radioactive hydrogen, which can cause cancer if ingested. And with groundwater streaming in at 150 cubic tons a day, a new tank is being added weekly. Naohiro Masuda, TEPCO’s Chief Decommissioning Office, told the foreign press in Japan March 2 nd that there are over 1,000 such storage tanks located inside and outside the plant, each holding as much as 1,000 cubic tons of treated water. TEPCO water tanks can be seen everywhere inside and outside the crippled plant. Consequently, the cooling water injected into the reactor becomes contaminated and finds its way down into the turbine basements adjacent to each reactor there, it mixes with incoming ground water to greatly magnifying the problem. Cooling water must be continuously circulated through the damaged reactors Units 1, 2 and 3, where nuclear fuel has melted through at least the inner containment vessels. Most evident of these challenges is the contaminated water. The answer is they continue to face the same four huge challenges they grappled with in 2011: dealing with contaminated water that has grown into a million-ton headache locating and somehow retrieving the molten fuel debris removing spent fuel rods from the damaged reactor storage pools and disposing of millions of cubic meters of radioactive waste. Now, on the fifth anniversary of what is known here as the Great East Japan Earthquake, how much progress has TEPCO and the government made in dealing with what was fundamentally a man-made disaster?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |