TEPCO probes Fukushima blackout

[robdogbucky]

TEPCO probes Fukushima blackout

Tokyo Electric Power Company is investigating the cause of a sudden power failure at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The blackout halted the cooling of a spent fuel pool for 5 hours.

The trouble occurred at around 7:10 AM on Friday, when a circuit breaker malfunctioned on the power feed to the No. 3 and 4 reactors.
The blackout halted equipment to cool the spent fuel pool for the No. 3 reactor. Cooling was restored around 5 hours later by means of an alternative power source.

The utility says there has been no major change in the pool's temperature of around 30 degrees Celsius.

TEPCO says the incident did not cause any radiation leakage, as work to inject water and nitrogen into the reactors continued with the other power source...

Friday, July 22, 2011 20:23 +0900 (JST)

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/society.html




Government tries to play down fears, cites tight import curbs overseas

Contaminated beef may have been sent abroad

Bloomberg

The government said it can't rule out the possibility beef contaminated with radioactive material has been exported, as consumers and lawmakers accused authorities of negligence on food safety.

The government on Tuesday imposed a ban on beef shipments from areas near the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant after finding 637 cattle were fed hay containing radioactive cesium. Supermarkets including the country's biggest, Aeon Co., said the beef was sold in Tokyo and other cities.

"We cannot completely rule out the possibility" contaminated beef was also sold abroad, Yuichi Imasaki, the deputy director of the farm ministry's meat and egg division, said Wednesday. "The chances are very low" because most countries have tightened rules on Japanese beef imports or banned them, he said.

The ban comes more than four months after the earthquake and tsunami wrecked the Fukushima No. 1 power station, causing the worst nuclear fallout since the Chernobyl disaster. Concerns about food contamination before Tuesday's ban cut beef exports by 16 percent in the last two months, while hotels and restaurants in the region, including Asian luxury chain Shangri-La, dropped Japanese seafood from its menu...

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110722n1.html




Gov't to buy up all beef containing cesium exceeding allowable levels

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The government will buy up all beef found to contain radioactive cesium at levels exceeding the allowable limit, and incinerate it, a senior farm ministry official said Thursday.

Nobutaka Tsutsui, senior vice minister of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, said the ministry is considering expanding the inspections currently imposed on all cattle shipped from Fukushima Prefecture to those from other prefectures.

"We're considering how much we can broaden the inspections on all the cattle and farms from outside Fukushima Prefecture," he said.

"We must prevent (cesium-contaminated beef) from going into circulation in the market," he added...

(Mainichi Japan) July 22, 2011

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110722p2g00m0dm026000c.html






70% of Japan's nuclear reactors remains shut

37 nuclear reactors in Japan, or nearly 70 percent of them, remain shut. This includes 2 reactors operated by Kansai Electric Power Company in Fukui Prefecture that were recently closed for regular inspections.

According to the plant operators, inspections for 11 of the 37 reactors will finish by August. But it is still unknown when any of these will be resumed due to the government's new stress-test requirements announced earlier this month.

The remaining 17 reactors that are currently in operation will also be brought to a halt for regular inspections every 13 months. Among these is the Kansai Electric Ohi power plant No. 4 reactor in Fukui Prefecture that will shut down by Saturday. An additional 3 reactors will be brought to a halt by August.

Among the 13 other reactors in operation, 5 will be stopped by autumn, 6 by winter, and 2 by spring. This would leave Japan with no nuclear reactors in operation by spring next year.

Friday, July 22, 2011 07:27 +0900 (JST)

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/22_06.html






Friday, July 22, 2011

Hamaoka to get seawalls of 18 meters

¥100 billion plan to make nuclear plant safe from huge tsunami

Kyodo


NAGOYA — Chubu Electric Power Co. said Friday it will build seawalls as high as 18 meters at its Hamaoka nuclear plant to protect the facility from tsunami.

Chubu Electric will spend ¥100 billion in total to build the seawalls, the facility's first, and take other measures against tsunami at the power plant in Omaezaki, Shizuoka Prefecture, which was taken out of operation in May at the request of the government. Construction of the seawalls will begin next month.

Previously, Chubu Electric planned to build seawalls at least 12 meters high based on its estimate that the maximum height of tsunami triggered by a potentially massive earthquake would be around 8 meters.

The estimate was obtained through a simulation based on data on tsunami that struck the region in 1854...

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110722x1.html






TEPCO admitted failure to vent Fukushima No. 1 reactor in May report

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) acknowledged it failed to vent steam from the containment vessel of Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant's No. 1 reactor in analysis reports as early as May, while publicly maintaining that the venting valves remained open, the Mainichi has learned.

TEPCO acknowledged the vent failure in the analysis report which was sent to the government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency on May 23 and publicly released on May 24.

The report runs a total of 247 pages and included presumptions about the status of the No. 1 to 6 reactor cores at the crippled plant based on instrumental data and reports written by plant workers. Descriptions of the closed valves on the No. 1 reactor's containment vessel appeared in a list of detailed analysis results on the No. 1 to No. 3 reactors on an accompanying sheet.

TEPCO said in the paper it confirmed a drop in pressure within the containment vessel at 2:30 p.m. on March 12, and presumed venting had been successful. TEPCO also recorded that at 2:49 p.m. it assumed the venting valves had closed as pressure began to rise in the containment vessel...

(Mainichi Japan) July 22, 2011

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110722p2a00m0na001000c.html




Tick tock

[Octafish]

1. Always expect the unimaginable.

So let's get the 18-meter seawall up, and all the rest that's needed, ASAFP. Some did bring up the possibility:

Masanobu Shishikura: The Man Who Predicted the Tsunami in 2009.

British scientist 'predicted nuclear power station problem'

Toshiaki Sakai: Utility Engineer Warned of Tsunami Threat at Japanese Nuclear Plant in 2007

Thanks for the heads-up, robdogbucky. Your information is infinitely better than what ABCNNBCBSFauxNoiseNutworks and the rest of the Murkan Press Corpse pass off as "news."