Friday, March 25, 2011

Work is continuing to cool the reactor 3 in Fukushima

The staff at the Fukushima nuclear power plant has resumed work to try to cool the reactor 3, after a day of disruption due to the emergence of black smoke, as announced by the Japanese agency for nuclear safety. While confirming that the black smoke has stopped, the agency has not reported the cause of this incident.

The reactor 3 nuclear plant is the greatest concern to the authorities, who suffered extensive damage during the tsunami on 11 March and also suffered an explosion in the building that covers due to excessive accumulation of hydrogen. Firefighters try to cool the fuel to prevent melt and prevent the outflow of radioactivity, said an agency official.

For its part, technicians Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) are trying to operate a reactor feed pump 3 water and thus lower the temperature, he added. The control room of reactor operation since Tuesday night thanks to an external power source. The company has reported that 3 workers were injured when high levels of radiation present.

Two have been taken to hospital after receiving a radiation of between 170 and 180 millisievert. Electricity in the control room of Reactor 1 plant was partially restored at 11:30 local time (03:30 Spanish time). "We're not sure if this implies that the cooling system opueda connected yet," said an official of the nuclear safety agency.

Technicians also try to restore power in the control room of Unit 2, the agency said, while in the reactor 4 was able to stabilize the temperature at safe levels. Moreover, the reactor coolant pump 5 has been arrested but will be starting again soon, added the agency. So far, the six reactors have been able to reconnect to the network and technicians are testing before connecting all systems.

The Fukushima Daiichi plant has six reactors, and was badly damaged by the tsunami of 11 March, which caused fuel cooling failures. The reactor 3, the greatest concern to the authorities, using MOX fuel, a mixture of uranium and plutonium oxides, the latter more dangerous. On the other hand, the nuclear accident in Fukushima is hurting the search for missing persons and the recovery of bodies in the region.

Soldiers told the Kyodo news agency that after the earthquake and tsunami of March 11 was preferred to evacuate the vicinity of the nuclear rather than the search for missing persons. So it was not possible to collect all the bodies.

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