New Blast Reported at Nuclear Plant as Japan Struggles to Cool ReactorBy HIROKO TABUCHI, KEITH BRADSHER and MATT WALD
Published: March 14, 2011
<snip>
TOKYO — An explosion early Tuesday morning damaged the No. 2 reactor at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, the third in a series of blasts that have now hit each of the three crippled reactors at the plant, plant officials said.
It was not immediately clear if the blast was caused by the buildup of hydrogen, as occurred at the two other reactors at Daiichi — one on Saturday and the most recent one on Monday, when there was also a large explosion at the No. 3 reactor. Some early reports in the Japanese press suggested the latest explosion amounted to a different and more critical problem than the previous two.
This explosion, reported to have occurred at 6:14 a.m., happened in the “pressure suppression room” in the cooling area of the reactor and inflicted some degree of damage on the pool of water used to cool the reactor, officials of Tokyo Electric Power said. But they did not say whether or not the incident had impacted the integrity of the steel containment structure that shields the nuclear fuel.
Company officials said radiation levels around the No. 2 reactor had spiked and that some emergency workers were evacuated from the area.
Any damage to the steel containment vessel of a nuclear reactor is considered critical because it raises the prospect of an uncontrolled release of radioactive material and full meltdown of the nuclear fuel inside. To date, even during the four-day crisis in Japan that amounts to the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, workers had managed to avoid a breach of a containment vessel and had limited releases of radioactive steam to relatively low levels.Details of what happened remain unclear, with executives of Tokyo Electric Power, the plant’s operator, giving only preliminary reports and declining to answer questions from reporters pressing for more information, while repeatedly apologizing “for causing concern and inconvenience.”
The new blast came after emergency operations to pump seawater into the same reactor temporarily failed, leaving the nuclear fuel in that reactor dangerously exposed late Monday into early Tuesday morning.
<snip>
Link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/world/asia/15nuclear.html?_r=1&hp:grouphug:
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
