TEPCO: Containment vessel in reactor 1 appears to be damaged

Tokyo Electric Power Company will have to review its plan for stabilizing the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility after a large amount of radioactive water was found in the basement of one of its reactor buildings.

The utility says it discovered an estimated 3,000 tons of contaminated water in the basement of the damaged Number 1 reactor building.

TEPCO says fuel rods in the Number 1 reactor melted down and created a hole in the bottom of the pressure vessel. It says the containment vessel also appears to be damaged and highly radioactive water has leaked into the basement of the building.

The company had planned to fill the containment vessel with water and set up a cooling system.

But it now says that it will study a plan to circulate water directly from the basement, through a decontamination filter and heat exchanger, and then back into the reactor.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/15_04.html

Is not that great... :argh:

...if it isn't holding water, it's damaged pretty much by definition.

Oh, I'm sure that is going to work out very well indeed.

beginnning. And we know it's deliberate.

And now we find out two other reactors are in the same shape.

TEPCO: Years needed to remove damaged nuclear fuel

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says it may take a number of years to remove damaged nuclear fuel rods from the Number 1 reactor.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company announced on Saturday, that most of the fuel rods in the Number 1 reactor have melted and fallen to the bottom of the reactor where they are submerged in water.

TEPCO announced in April that it was aiming to get the reactor stabilized and cooled down in 6 to 9 months.
However, no timeline has yet been proposed for the removal of the nuclear fuel.

The company plans to study measures taken at the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the US, where a meltdown of nuclear fuel rods also occurred. There it took almost 10 years to remove melted fuel at the bottom of the reactor, which resembled hardened lava.

Sunday, May 15, 2011 08:57 +0900 (JST)

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/15_05.html



More great news from TEPCO:

Rapid meltdown in No.1 reactor

Tokyo Electric Power Company, the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, says most of the fuel rods in the No.1 reactor had dropped to the bottom of the pressure vessel within 16 hours of the earthquake on March 11th. The utility revealed its study on the subject on Sunday.

TEPCO said it analyzed the data and calculated a timeline for the developments in the No. 1 reactor on the assumption that the reactor lost its cooling system as soon as it was hit by the tsunami. The firm said that within about 3 hours after the reactor automatically shut down, the cooling water had evaporated to a level at the top of the rods.

In the next hour and a half, parts of the fuel rods are believed to have begun melting.

The temperature of the fuel rods is believed to have reached 2,800 degrees Celsius at this stage, and the meltdown advanced rapidly...

Sunday, May 15, 2011 23:29 +0900 (JST)


http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/15_21.html