Updates on Japan Fukushima Nuclear Plant

1 ANSWERS

1. Guest9851
   

   Japanese officials early Saturday expanded the area around a crippled nuclear power plant subject to emergency evacuation, as radiation levels inside the facility were reported to have surged and operators struggled to keep the plant’s cooling system operating on battery power.
   A Japanese nuclear safety panel said radiation levels were 1,000 times above normal in a reactor control room after a huge quake damaged the plant’s cooling system, and that some radiation it was not clear how much had seeped outside the plant. The elevated radiation reading was taken inside the control room of the No. 1 reactor of the Fukushima plant.
   Prime Minister Naoto Kan said before boarding a helicopter to visit the plant that the government had expanded the evacuation area around the plant to a six-mile radius from a two-mile radius.
   The nuclear plant, known formally as the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, was operating in an emergency, battery-powered cooling mode seventeen hours after the earthquake knocked out its two main sources of the electrical power needed for safe shutdown. But the International Atomic Energy Agency said that "mobile electricity supplies have arrived at the site” to keep the crisis at the crippled plant from worsening.
   The Chief Cabinet Secretary of the Japanese government said the plant was releasing steam with a "very small" amount of radioactive material to relieve pressure in one reactor at the. The government had earlier declared an "atomic power emergency" to begin the evacuation, a difficult challenge in the midst of a natural catastrophe
   With the steam-driven pump in operation, pressure valves on the reactor vessel would open automatically as pressure rose too high, or could be opened by operators. "It’s not like they have a breach, there’s no broken pipe venting steam,” said Margaret E. Harding, a nuclear safety consultant, who managed a team at General Electric, the reactor’s designer, that analyzed pressure build-up in reactor containments. "You’re getting pops of release valves, for minutes, not hours, that take pressure back down.”

   Report (0) (0)  |   12 years, 8 month(s) ago