Workers reconnected the power cable to one reactor at the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi atomic plant, signaling progress in efforts to prevent Japan’s nuclear crisis from escalating.
Tokyo Electric Power Co engineers will begin work on restoring power to the cooling system of the No 2 reactor tomorrow morning, Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said at a press conference in Tokyo. The cable will also power the No 1 reactor, he said.
Troops and firefighters sprayed water on four of the plant’s six reactors today to prevent fuel rods from overheating and spewing radiation into the air as they battled the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986. Tokyo Electric, or Tepco, earlier cautioned that cooling systems may fail to function even with power restored because of damage sustained in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
“It’s really a question of how many of the pumping systems they can start up,” said George Dracoulis, a professor in the Australian National University’s nuclear physics department. “It’s still not clear whether all of them can be restarted because they may be damaged.”
Tepco vented hydrogen gas at reactor No 5 and 6 today to prevent a buildup of pressure, spokesman Kaoru Yoshida said. Such buildups caused explosions at units 1, 2 and 3.
Milk, spinach
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said radiation above government limits was found in milk and spinach produced near the nuclear power plant crippled after the magnitude-9 earthquake, Japan’s strongest on record. A series of aftershocks have rocked Japan since, and a 5.9-temblor struck about 45 miles (73 kilometers) south west of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant today, according to the US Geological Survey. People living within 30 kilometers of the Fukushima plant along the northeastern coast should wear masks and long sleeves and stay out of the rain, Japan’s nuclear safety agency said today.
Rain, wind
A frontal system with heavy rain and northerly winds is predicted for tomorrow, “increasing the risk for the region around Tokyo,” Austria’s Meteorological and Geophysics Center said in a statement.
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Radiation has been detected in eastern Russia at levels that pose no risk to human health, the center said. A “minuscule” amount of radiation that probably came from the damaged Japanese reactors was picked up at a California monitoring station yesterday, the US government said. “I can’t see members of the general public exposed to dangerous levels of radiation,” Don Higson, a fellow at the Australasian Radiation Protection Society and former adviser to the International Atomic Energy Agency, said by phone today. Tepco said earlier today workers restarted a cooling pump from backup generators at the plant’s No 5 reactor, which was undergoing maintenance at the time of the March 11 earthquake and was one of the least damaged.
‘Important step’
Engineers had worked through the night to reconnect the power cable, which Tepco had aimed to complete yesterday. Power may be restored to all six reactors by tomorrow, Hikaru Kuroda, chief of Tepco’s nuclear facility management department, said in Tokyo earlier today.