The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #136314   Message #3190958
Posted By: Q (Frank Staplin)
19-Jul-11 - 05:27 PM
Thread Name: BS: Japan Nuclear plant disaster, 2011
Subject: RE: BS: Japan Nuclear plant disaster, 2011
The Mainichi Daily News calls it an "updated work schedule." It does not add much to the previous announcement.
"Cooling operations have been stabilized" and "the risk of hydrogen explosions has been eliminated."
"We are starting to see a tremendous critical condition heading toward a certain level of settlement."
Cold shutdown, scheduled for January, may be moved up so that people forced to evacuate can return home.
"Workers have now succeeded in instaling devices to remove radioactive substances from the polluted water and recycle the decontaminated water to cool the crippled Nos. 1 to 3 reactors [at Fukushima]."
At No. 4 unit, all of its fuel rods had been stored in the spent fuel pool, and "work is proceeding to create a system involving a heat exchange device to stably and efficiently cool the water inside the pool."
Manichi Daily News comments that the decontamination system was operating only at 73% efficiency.
"Tepco would consider creating an underground "shielding wall" to surround the reactor turbine buildings so as to prevent contaminated water seeping from the buildings and getting mixedin with groundwater."

We hope that the goals are accomplished, but outside nuclear agencies are not entirely convinced.