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 (JST)
If you recall, estimates were for a reduction in isotopes as high as 1/10,000th the original amount.
Hopefully, they will troubleshoot the problem and find a sustainable solution, because a 1/100 reduction won't cut it in the long term.
The timing couldn't be worse. Tepco is starting to limit the volume of water being used to cool the reactors because contaminated water levels are beginning to max out.
Um ... too much radioactive material in the water for such a puny system. Doomed to fail under any and all circumstances.
ReplyDeleteReactor rad levels are + 20 Sv/hr and more. The same water burned TEPCO workers' feet not that long ago.
Time for 'Plan B' and an end to press- agentry and PR nonsense. Pump some sand, boron and bentonite into the reactors w/ water and at least slow leaks into the ground. Slowly add solids to reactors to throttle reactivity. Get the 100's of thousands to start entombing the reactors.
Otherwise, it's just going to get worse and worse ...