Thursday, June 16, 2011

#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: Kurion's System Leak Was Due to High Pressure in One of Cesium Absorption Towers

Accordingly, the safety valve, called the "rupture disk", ruptured as designed to release the pressure and let the water flow out, according to Asahi Shinbun (in Japanese; 12:01PM JST 6/17/2011).

Why did the pressure go up in that particular set of towers (most upstream of the 4 sets)? Because a valve was closed shut downstream. TEPCO hinted it may have been a human error, that a worker closed that downstream valve by mistake.

The total amount of water leaked was more than 6,000 liters [or 6 tonnes].

TEPCO will replace the ruptured "rupture disk" as well as the same disks for the other three sets of towers, and hopes to start the full run by midnight on June 17.

I was told by a former TEPCO nuclear plant engineer that something else is likely involved when the company wants to blame workers for a malfunction or an accident. We'll see if that's the case here.

The contaminated water situation must be getting really bad for TEPCO to hurry on with the full run that will process the highly contaminated water heavily mixed with seawater.

On the side note, Yomiuri Shinbun reports that the CEO of Areva, Anne Lauvergeon, will not be reappointed at the end of June, in the decision made by the office of the President of France, despite the urging by the company's executive board. Areva is 90% owned by the French government, and the CEO is rumored to have had disagreements with President Nicolas Sarkozy. The new CEO is going to be Luc Oursel, current COO of the company in charge of international marketing and projects. Oursel's name was missing in the letter by the company's executive board urging the reappointment of Anne Lauvergeon, as Reuters reports.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

New NASA research points to possible HAARP connection in Japan earthquake, tsunami
http://www.naturalnews.com/032670_Fukushima_HAARP.html

Anonymous said...

The philosophy of a double-walled system is that any and all potential leaks are collected and delivered to a tank, so that nothing escapes to the environment - "containment" if you will. That should include rupture disks, where the fluid that escapes through the ruptured disk is collected and delivered to storage. Highly radioactive water that has presumably been contained (mostly in buildings) is going to be processed and leaks (or ruptures) will be inevitable. Shouldn't this process be treated at least as carefully as storing and pumping gasoline? The technology exists and should be readily available. Why is it not being used? The risk that further contamination of the site by highly radioactive water escaping from the water treatment system is not frivolous.

Anonymous said...

French Embassy is planning a reception for 1000 people on 14 July in Koriyama. This is to jointly celebrate a French national holiday.

http://www.ambafrance-jp.org/spip.php?article4834

It seems a nice enough gesture, but I wonder whether people in Koriyama appreciate celebrating something with the people who sold Tepco the stuff that's now on the streets as fallout. Or is it a thank you for giving quasi state-run Areva that job of cleaning up the water against a small fee? Well, not to be mean, but I wonder how this will be received by the population. That "nice gesture" has a slightly dark angle to it.

Anonymous said...

Robbie001 sez:

Double walled pipes are a great idea except they don't have the time to weld and test single walled pipe much less double the connections. Remember they are working against a rising tide. In the normal world this decontamination plant would take a year or more to assemble and those workers wouldn't be dressed in full face masks and Tyvek suits. From what I've heard they plan to redirect leaks but that won't be the main problem if they have a leak. The problem will be fixing a leak that is 10,000 times hotter than the water they are testing with now. The water treatment system is supposed to have an automatic shutoff so it shouldn't leak enough water to exit the building but it will still require decontamination before repairs can be made. Don't worry all the bulldozed spent fuel and rain will take care of local ground water contamination. For all we know the percolating spent fuel way be the source of contamination they are finding in the sub-pit drains below the facility. This is why we don't scatter shattered spent fuel into the ground to store it.

Well it looks like we are off to the races I just saw on NHK that the plant is up and running. They didn't say if it was another test so this might be a hot run. If they are running hot then I bet they reached storage overflow despite the fact NHK reported they had ten more days of storage left.

Anonymous said...

http://lci.tf1.fr/france/faits-divers/2011-06/du-the-vert-japonais-radioactif-intercepte-a-roissy-6540699.html

This article says dried green tea leaves from shizuoka were detected as radioactive and put in quarantine in order to exactly measure the radioactivity.
That means probably the shipment made the alarm go off.

Controls will now be systematic from products from this prefecture in France...

lmae

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