Tokyo Electric Power Co. plans to release 3,000 tons of lightly radioactive water into the ocean from the Fukushima Daini nuclear complex, the sister plant of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi complex, officials said Wednesday.
Tokyo
Electric Power Co. plans to release 3,000 tons of lightly radioactive water
into the ocean from the Fukushima Daini nuclear complex, the sister plant of
the stricken Fukushima Daiichi complex, officials said Wednesday.
The utility, also known as Tepco, is going ahead with the discharge even as the
fishing industry complains it will add to worries about the contamination of
seawater and further reduce fish consumption in
Japan
.
The water is believed to be largely within permissible levels of contamination
for discharging into the ocean. But Tepco and the government want to avoid the
kind of backlash from local fishery associations and neighboring countries that
followed the discharge of far more toxic water from the Daiichi plant in April.
The seawater at the Daini plant, located 10 kilometers (six miles) south of the
Daiichi complex, entered when the plant was flooded by the massive March 11
tsunami. While the tsunami knocked out power at the Daiichi plant, causing a
meltdown of some of its reactor cores, the Daini complex was safely shut down
after the disaster.
Tepco says the water has accumulated in reactor and turbine buildings, as well
as other facilities, raising concerns that it might corrode piping and cause
leakage of radioactive materials.
The government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, which hasn't yet decided
whether to approve the plan, said the water contains a small amount of
radioactive material, including manganese-54 and cobalt-58. But the amounts are
mostly within permissible levels for discharge into the ocean. NISA said there
is an estimated 3 billion becquerels of radioactive materials in the 3,000 tons
of water. By comparison, in the first week of April, 520 tons of highly
radioactive water leaked from the Daiichi complex containing 4,700
terabequerels.
The water will undergo a decontamination process at Daini to further reduce the
levels of radioactive material before being released into the ocean, Tepco
said.
Tepco has sounded out government agencies and local governments on the plan. But
the Fisheries Agency and some local governments are likely to oppose it,
regardless of how low the levels of radioactive materials.
"Why does Tepco have to do this when the fishing industry is struggling
with rumors of radiation contamination?" asked one fisheries-agency
official. "It is not the issue of how low the radiation is. Such a move
will reinforce fears of seawater contamination and further put off consumers
from buying fish."
Demand for fish caught in the prefectures of
Fukushima
and
neighboring
Ibaraki
took
a hit after sandlance fish caught in April were found with more than allowable
levels of radioactive iodine and cesium. Agency officials said sales of fish
have been slow even outside these prefectures.
"Tepco should consult the relevant parties before implementing the plan,
even if it would be perfectly legal to go ahead with it," NISA spokesman
Hidehiko Nishiyama said.
NISA's caution may be a product of the uproar among neighboring countries and
the local fishing community when Tepco dumped 10,000 tons of low-level
radioactive water in mid-April to create storage space for more highly
contaminated water.
The accumulation of radioactive water has been one of the major challenges at
the troubled Daiichi plant. More than 100,000 tons of irradiated water is
flooding the basements of reactor buildings and adjoining trenches and
facilities. Some of the water came from the tsunami, and some from operations
to inject water into the damaged reactors to cool them.
Now that the rainy season has started, the level of water is rising, and with
it, fears that the it will again overflow into the ocean.
To avoid further large-scale contamination, Tepco is working with French
nuclear energy firm Areva S.A. to build a water-treatment facility that can
decontaminate 1,200 tons of water per day at the Daiichi plant by around June
15. NISA spokesman Mr. Nishiyama said construction is proceeding on schedule.
But Tepco is bringing in temporary storage tanks with a total capacity of
40,000 tons in June, and 20,000 tons each in July and August, to ensure there
is storage space for contaminated water if completion of the treatment facility
is delayed.
Separately, Tepco said that power was temporarily lost to the control room
serving the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant early
Wednesday afternoon, but it was restored about three hours later.
The outage blacked out the control room and stopped a data system for some of
the radiation monitoring posts. Hydrogen injection into the reactors was also
temporarily suspended.
The cooling system wasn't affected, however, allowing workers to continue an
operation to cool the reactors.
Διαβάστε ακόμα
Τρι, 24 Σεπτεμβρίου 2024 - 19:58
Τρι, 24 Σεπτεμβρίου 2024 - 19:54
Τετ, 18 Σεπτεμβρίου 2024 - 18:32
Τετ, 18 Σεπτεμβρίου 2024 - 18:27
Τρι, 17 Σεπτεμβρίου 2024 - 20:01