Japan's TEPCO: air release starts at No.3 reactor
TOKYO, March 13 |
TOKYO, March 13 (Reuters) - Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) , Japan's largest electric utility, said on Sunday it had started releasing air from a reactor container vessel at the No.3 reactor of its Fukushima Daiichi power plant.
Japan's nuclear power safety agency said earlier in the day that the emergency cooling system was no longer functioning at the No.3 reactor, after the plant was damaged in a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami on Friday.
(Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Michael Watson)
- Tweet this
- Link this
- Share this
- Digg this
- Reprints
We welcome comments that advance the story through relevant opinion, anecdotes, links and data. If you see a comment that you believe is irrelevant or inappropriate, you can flag it to our editors by using the report abuse links. Views expressed in the comments do not represent those of Reuters. For more information on our comment policy, see http://blogs.reuters.com/fulldisclosure/2010/09/27/toward-a-more-thoughtful-conversation-on-stories/
Comments (3)
bushpovertyland wrote:
Safe, clean, reliable, nuclear power.. at this rate, the human race is so very, doomed.
NadPauKucGraMcK wrote:
Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds
TheBWRexpert wrote:
The system that circulates the water between the reactor and the suppression pool in the containment is driven by steam. It was designed that way for situations like this where there is essentially no or very little electrical power. The steam-driven pump that circulates water does not have enough steam to run it as the amount of nuclear decay heat to drive it decreases. Decay heat was originally at 7% of reactor power. It is now less than 0.5%. The inability to use the steam-driven pump is expected. Now the priority is to flood everything so that natural circulation without any pumping can complete the cool down process.
Do not panic. The Japanese engineers and experts are doing a great job handling a difficult problem.
This discussion is now closed. We welcome comments on our articles for a limited period after their publication.
Follow Reuters