Japan facility to reach capacity of radiation-tainted water

May 23, 2011, 11:12 GMT

Tokyo - A waste disposal facility at a damaged nuclear plant in Japan will soon reach its capacity of radiation-contaminated water transferred from its reactors, the plant operator said Monday.

Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said it would suspend the transfer from Fukushima Daiichi reactors 2 and 3 until the middle of June after the water reaches the capacity of the facility. The operator said it would wait for a new water processing facility to start operation.

The plant was crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, which left more than 15,100 dead and some 8,800 missing as of Sunday. It has leaked radioactive substances ever since.

The company has been struggling to remove highly contaminated water accumulated from reactor buildings and adjoining trenches. The water has prevented workers from restoring key cooling functions in the plant's reactors.

The struggle is expected to continue as the amount of water is likely to be boosted by continuing leaks from reactors and the inflow of rainwater in the wet season, which will start soon.

Hidehiko Nishiyama, spokesman for the government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said that once the storage space reached capacity, the contaminated water would be kept where it is for the time being to the extent that it does not overflow, Kyodo News reported.

Some 10,000 tons of contaminated water was being transferred from an underground tunnel near reactor 2. As of Monday morning, roughly 8,700 tons of the water had been diverted to the facility at a rate of 12 tons per hour.

The operator was also to transfer 4,000 tons of contaminated water from the turbine building of reactor 3. A total of 2,700 tons of the 4,000 had already been transported at a rate of 20 tons per hour, Kyodo said.

More than 80,000 tons of contaminated water remains around reactors number 1 to 4. The operator is to recycle the water to cool the nuclear fuel inside reactors number 1 to 3 after desalinating it.

TEPCO said Tuesday that under a revised plan the operator would create a water circulation system in which it would eliminate radioactive materials from water inundating reactor buildings and use the water to cool reactors.

The operator also started preparations to increase the earthquake resistance of the lower part of the spent fuel pool of the plant's reactors number 1 to 4, Jiji Press reported citing TEPCO.

Members of an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) investigation team arrived in Japan Monday to carry out inspection at the plant and look into safety issues of the nuclear crisis.

The 20-member team will meet government officials and inspect the site of the plant during a 10-day mission beginning Tuesday.

The team will report on its findings at an IAEA ministerial meeting in Vienna in June.

Also on Monday, shares in TEPCO dived 8.99 per cent to an all-time low of 334 yen after posting net losses of 1.25 trillion yen (15.3 billion dollars) last week for the financial year which ended in March.

The loss was the largest ever for a Japanese company outside the finance sector.

Director Toshio Nishizawa is to replace Masataka Shimizu as president and Shimizu will step down to take responsibility for the losses, the company said Friday.