Japanese Experts: Effort is Failing, and Reactors are too Hot to Cover in Concrete

TEPCO begins to admit defeat.


From Energy News

… A month into the crisis, the utility acknowledges, there is no end in sight. …
Some Japanese experts now say the effort is in danger of failing unless Japan seeks more help from international experts to bring it to an end. …
Tokyo Electric officials told CNN they can’t say when they’ll be able to restore those normal cooling. …
Satoshi Sato, a Japanese nuclear industry consultant, called the current line of attack a “waste of effort.” Plant instruments are likely damaged and unreliable because of the intense heat that was generated, and pumping more water into the reactors is only making the contamination problem worse, he said. “There is no happy end with their approach,” Sato told CNN. …
[Tetsunari Iida, an engineer-turned-industry critic] said Fukushima Daiichi’s reactors remain too hot to pour concrete, but he suggested pouring a slurry of minerals and sand over them to carry away heat before encasing them. …

And if things weren't already bad enough, a new 5.9 M quake struck the region Monday night, knocking out power at Fukushima.


From Kyodo

Restoration work at Fukushima plant suffers setback in Monday quake

TOKYO, April 11, Kyodo

Restoration work at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant suffered another setback as the area was hit by a strong earthquake Monday evening,
but the government's nuclear safety agency said no major safety problem is believed to have occurred at the troubled reactors due to the latest quake.
Injection of coolant water to the already-troubled Nos. 1 to 3 reactors halted for about 50 minutes because external power was cut off, but injection resumed after the power was restored, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.
The quake led to a delay in the work to remove highly radioactive water that is hampering restoration efforts in the nuclear crisis that has continued for one month since the March 11 killer earthquake and tsunami hit the six-reactor plant.
Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. was expected to start from Monday pumping out some 700 tons of highly contaminated water from an underground trench to a nearby storage area it secured in the No. 2 reactor turbine building.
But the nuclear agency said in a hastily arranged press conference after the evening quake that the work would be delayed to Tuesday or later. Workers at the site were temporarily ordered to evacuate after the quake.
Earlier in the day, Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the nuclear regulatory agency, said that it is ''not yet a situation to be optimistic about'' and that it is ''extremely difficult to show a time schedule'' on the prospects of the restoration process.
''Now we are in a dilemma because we are seeing water which is pumped in to cool down the reactors showing up as pools of (contaminated) water in other places of the plant,'' Nishiyama said, stressing that the water problem should be overcome to continue with the work to restore the damaged key cooling functions of the reactors.
While Nishiyama said workers at the site have been doing all they can in the past month to grapple with the country's worst nuclear crisis, the local community was so frustrated with Tokyo Electric that Fukushima Gov. Yuhei Sato rejected meeting with the utility firm President Masataka Shimizu on Monday.
Water containing radioactive substances has been found in the basements of the Nos. 1 to 3 reactor turbine buildings, which contain key electrical equipment, as well as in tunnel-like trenches connected to them. The water, totaling some 60,000 tons, has to be removed and stored in nearby tanks and other places.
To make room to store some of the 60,000 tons of polluted water, TEPCO has dumped into the Pacific Ocean less-contaminated water from a facility for nuclear waste disposal in the plant.
The nuclear agency said a total of 9,070 tons of liquid have been disposed of into the sea since April 4, in addition to about 1,300 tons of contaminated groundwater from near the No. 5 and No. 6 reactors.
Nishiyama told a morning press conference that TEPCO is expected to finish checking whether there is water left to discharge, and that he wants to make sure that local communities and other countries would be properly notified about the end of the work as the move has sparked concerns in and around Japan over the impact on the marine environment.
Once workers finish dumping the lower-level contaminated water, they can go on with the work to transfer the highly polluted water filling up the No. 2 reactor turbine building to the nuclear waste disposal facility, which can accommodate 30,000 tons of liquid.
The water inside the basement of the No. 2 reactor turbine building and the trench connected to it is highly contaminated, and is believed to originate from the No. 2 reactor core where fuel rods have partially melted.
Massive amounts of water have been poured into the reactors and their spent nuclear fuel pools as a stopgap measure to cool them down. But pools of contaminated water have been detected in various parts of the nuclear complex, with some leaking into the sea, as an apparent side effect of the emergency measure.
Nitrogen, an inert gas, had been injected into the No. 1 reactor to reduce the potential risks of hydrogen explosion. But the injection was suspended after the evening quake.
Meanwhile, TEPCO has worked to install enclosing materials in the sea to prevent a further spread of highly radioactive water that had already seeped from the plant. The leakage was plugged last week.
TEPCO President Shimizu visited the Fukushima prefectural government office Monday afternoon to apologize for the nuclear disaster, but the governor declined to meet him because he thought the president should place priority on settling the nuclear plant problems, according to officials from the utility and the prefectural government.
==Kyodo