NationalFeb. 07, 2012 - 11:39AM JST TOKYO —
Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said Monday that the water temperature in the No. 2 reactor at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has risen from 45 degrees on Jan 27 to 69.2 degrees on Monday.
One of three thermometers in the reactor has shown that the temperature has risen by 20 degrees in the last four days, NTV reported. TEPCO said it is continuing to pump more water into the troubled reactor to cool it down, but so far, the utility has not been able to pinpoint the exact cause of the rising temperature.
A TEPCO official told a news conference that the replacement of a water pipe might have caused a change in the water circulation and that the temperature might be rising in areas where the water flow isn’t smooth, NTV reported. Melted fuel may also have spilled over from the containment vessel into the water, the TEPCO official said. TEPCO said it was injecting 9.5 tons of water into the reactor, compared to the usual one ton per hour.
The latest development calls into question Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s announcement last December that the Fukushima Daiichi plant had achieved a stable state of cold shutdown—which was intended to reassure the nation that significant progress had been made in the nine months since the March 11 tsunami sent three reactors into meltdowns.
Japan Today
2 comments:
Hi there Friends; I would have thought the Fukushima Daiichi plant had achieved a stable state of cold shutdown by now. However, because that has not apparently happened it only goes to show that the Japanese government is not up to telling the truth when it is vitally important that the truth be told. What we now have is this situation and that the Japanese government have effectively lied to the whole world relative to the situation, when to come out with the facts of the matter relative to the whole situation would have been a whole lot better for everyone concerned. What really needs to happen now is that the questionable reactor needs to be shutdown, as well as all nuclear reactors right throughout Japan, and in doing so the Japanese government can stop putting everyone's lives at stake. The answer to solving the problem is so simple that it is a wonder that there is not someone within the Japanese Government has not thought of it before now. There is nobody who can get within 100 metres of the plant without having to suffer serious consequences for doing so - in other words zapped. Apparently, there are tons and tons of fuel possibly embedded in the steel walls of a huge pot known as the reactor, with the possibility that it is burning its way through the very foundations of the same pot very real indeed. The reactor is under metres and metres of boiling hot water and removing the water have the disastrous effect of causing the whole mass of fuel to reach 500 degrees Celsius. Without active cooling, what is left will still be able to kill a man at a distance of 20-30 metres. The reactors will have to be opened little by little, without letting out harmful radiation, and providing the fuel is still there it will have to be insulated and transported chunk by chunk. However, the problem is that there is no tool available, either a remote controlled robot, etc that is able to do the job and so what we have on our hands at the moment is nothing more than one great big disaster that is just ready to become a whole lot worse. Kindest Regards
Hi there Bob; While we are on the subject matter of nuclear reactors, is there anyone out there in Internet land who has noticed that the new EU headquarters that Van Rompuy is spending some $350 million on has been designed to look like a nuclear reactor? I was wondering if that was the intention or if it is nothing more than a just sheer coincidence? Alternatively, is this just my vivid imagination working overtime? Whatever, it is quite interesting to say the least? God bless one and all
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