![]() But by the end of next year, the tanks and the site will be full. The radioactive element, tritium, remains inside all of the stored water, albeit at "low" levels, according to TEPCO.Ĭurrently, 1.2 million tonnes of contaminated water is stored in more than 1,000 tanks spanning the entire power plant facility. The water is processed to remove more than 60 different types of radioactive materials from it, but the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) doesn't completely purify the water. How do you remove a million tonnes of contaminated water?Īll of the water that touches the highly radioactive molten fuel also becomes contaminated. But that is not the most pressing issue facing TEPCO. "But because of the coronavirus, the manufacturing process and testing has been delayed." "We are planning to remove the fuel debris from Unit 2 using a robot arm and the plan was to make the arm and carry out a performance test in the UK," TEPCO's Yoshinori Takahashi told me. The company was hoping to start removal of the highly radioactive debris this year, but the coronavirus pandemic will prevent that from happening. It's estimated the full clean-up effort will take another 30-40 years, though some experts feel this is optimistic. It's about the same as a chest x-ray and nothing to be worried about at this stage - but our minders tell us we shouldn't spend too much more time here. At the same time, my radiation alarm goes off to tell me I've accumulated 0.02 millisieverts of radiation while at the plant. In the space of just a few steps, radiation levels spike from 80 microsieverts an hour to 100. It's been 10 years since Japan's worst nuclear accident, which was triggered by the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in the country and a massive tsunami that wiped out everything in its path. The mere mention of this region still conjures up a mix of fear, anxiety and images of swarms of people working away in full hazardous material suits. This is the first time I've been in the place responsible for it. It is always an eerie experience seeing entire towns frozen in time and the stories from those who once called it home are equally chilling. I've been inside Fukushima's no-go zones, where the radiation levels are so high it's unliveable and overgrown weeds entangle anything in their way - from abandoned homes, cars and even vending machines. It was a rare opportunity to look at how the clean-up effort was going 10 years on.īut weighing on my mind as I headed inside and took a look around was that this was of the most radioactive places on earth right now. The International Atomic Energy Agency broadly backs TEPCO's water release plan, which is slated to go ahead later this year.I won't lie - I was a little nervous heading inside the destroyed nuclear plant at the centre of Japan's 2011 nuclear accident. Then, once they're transferred to normal sea water, lab tests show they flush the tritium from their systems within days. They flourish in tanks filled with tritium-laced water. ![]() To prove the discharged water will not harm fish, TEPCO has been raising flounder inside the nuclear plant. "The local community must sign off first, so we've been talking constantly with the local fishermen and residents of the communities," he said. ![]() The water will meet all international standards for discharge, and the discharge of the water into the sea - through a long pipe - will only start when all stakeholders have signed off.įacility manager Kazuo Yamanaka said that even when the pipes and pumps are complete, "that doesn't mean we're allowed to start getting rid of the water." There will be no consequences, says TEPCO. "The company says it's safe, but the consequences could catch up with us 50 years down the road." "The sea is not a garbage dump," he said. "Piping water into the sea is an outrage," said Haruo Ono, who has been fishing the ocean off the coast of Fukushima all his life. ![]()
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