#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: They Didn't Water Reactor 4's Spent Fuel Pool For More Than 3 Days

Remember the post on Wednesday (4/13) about the high water temperature (90 degrees Celsius) of the Spent Fuel Pool in Reactor 4 and TEPCO's (and the government's) comment that the damage to the fuel rods there are only partial and everything is dandy?

I even read a comment from a Tokyo University professor basically saying "90 degrees Celsius is good, because the water is not boiling. It means water is cooling the rods." (NHK Japanese)

Well, what those Japanese MSM (Asahi and Mainichi, NHK) didn't report was this (from Global Security Newswire):

Workers were firing water into the pond from a distance in an effort to prevent the fuel from overheating and releasing radioactive contaminants, but fluid collecting in an adjacent flood control container triggered an incorrect warning that the pond had been filled. Personnel halted water transfers to the pool for a number of days in response to the warning, allowing heat and radiation levels to increase even though the fuel was thought to have remained submerged, Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency Deputy Director General Hidehiko Nishiyama said. Water spraying began again on Wednesday.

This bit of information is supposedly from AP, but I haven't been able to find the original AP article, and there was no link to the AP article at Global Security Newswire.

What I do see is that TEPCO did not water the Spent Fuel Pool in Reactor 4 for over 3 days (from NISA news release on April 15):

90 tons of fresh water pumped, from 5:07PM to 7:24PM on April 9

195 tons of fresh water pumped, from 12:30AM to 6:57AM on April 13

I'll go find the video of the press conference given by Nishiyama of NISA.


(h/t M. Simon)

Tweet