Spent fuel cooling halts for 10 hours at wrecked Fukushima plant

Incident again in Fukushima? I thought everything is being held by highest standard after March 11, 2011?

It's a ticking time bomb. I wish I had more confidence in Japanese engineers and corporations to manage something so complex and potentially very dangerous.

TEPCO is an ongoing Embarrassment to the Country. Even the backup “Power” supply doesn’t do its job !!!!

I know it’s easy to question the Japanese engineers and system for this ongoing crisis, but is anyone in the know of what should have been done over the past 15 years? The process does seem agonizingly slow, but are they doing what they can to contain it?

Are there scientists from all over the world working together to remedy the situation? More questions as usual that answers, you hardly ever hear about it in the press unless of course like here, when something goes wrong.

Nothing major. The earthquake and tsunami did not damage no5&6 reactors.

The technology does not yet exist to fix Fukushima Daiichi. They are doing what they can to limit the damage, experimenting with new technologies and hoping for the best.

Stuff like this doesn't fill people with confidence. Systems should not be down for that long.

Reactors 5 & 6 remain undamaged despite the events that affected reactors 1-4. If necessary, TEPCO would have provided additional cooling water for reactor 6.

Since this is TEPCO and in the last 13 years perhaps not a single sentence they've released has been completely true and always multi-meaning, then I guess I'll take the liberty of translating it into layman's terms.

No significant changes in the water level or the temperature of the pool were observed while the pump was dormant, TEPCO said.

During the time when observations were not made, it is unclear whether the water level and temperature remained stable. (see observations vs monitoring).

There could have been fluctuations or changes in the water level and temperature that went unnoticed (we had that with TEPCO already in 2012 or 2013).

The reliability of the statement depends on the frequency and regularity of the observations - how frequent, or infrequent were the observations? Hopefully no one with just an Excel sheet, writing numbers down..

This situation suggests a need for improved monitoring systems to ensure that any changes in water level or temperature are detected in real-time.

For all non-engineers here: By now the decay heat is way less than 1kW per tonne of fuel. Given they have thousands of tons of cooling water and given that it can also work in a passive circulation mode, there is absolutely no danger from stopping the active circulation for many days in a row. A few hours won't even move the needle. The only issue is that something didn't work as it should have been.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_heat

To the armchair critics,

There was no cover-up, the incident was reported to the media on the same day.

The decommissioning of the power plant is a complex procedure and those working there are doing their best with new and experimental technology.

Take a chill pill!!

Not to worry, TEPCO, we trust and believe you!

deanzaZZRToday 07:25 am JST

I wish I had more confidence in Japanese engineers and corporations to manage something so complex and potentially very dangerous.

Luckily, the anti-Japan crowd doesn't need to have confidence only in the Japanese, as the engineers and corporations aren't all Japanese.

TEPCO works with international organizations such as Sellafield in the UK, which has more decommissioning experience than anyone in the world:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/sellafield-ltd-and-japan-prove-the-value-of-continued-cooperation

IRID (leading the robot development) works with many international experts:

https://irid.or.jp/en/activities/adviser/20221108-2/

The monitoring committee has international experts, and is led by the former Chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission:

http://www.nrmc.jp/en/about/index-e.html

And the IAEA is an international organization - which, yes, includes your Chinese friends on the inspection team.

If you don't trust any of these people, you probably won't trust anyone.

It's a ticking time bomb.

It really isn't.

smithinjapanToday 01:55 pm JST

Not to worry, TEPCO, we trust and believe you!

Many people don't. And that's precisely why the IAEA is verifying everything.

GillToday 10:53 am JST

Since this is TEPCO and in the last 13 years perhaps not a single sentence they've released has been completely true and always multi-meaning.

A highly dubious sentence in itself.

I think the IAEA and many other organizations would've pulled TEPCO up on releasing almost nothing truthful over 13 years.

Ricky Kaminski13Today 08:36 am JST

is anyone in the know of what should have been done over the past 15 years? The process does seem agonizingly slow, but are they doing what they can to contain it?

There's an overall roadmap for the decommissioning, but the work will take decades. This is no fault of the Japanese engineers (or even the, often rightly-maligned, politicians): it's an unprecedented task of unprecedented difficulty, and any country would be in the same boat.

Here's the roadmap:

https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissioning/index.html

Despite appearances, a huge amount has been achieved. Very briefly, off the top of my head: reactor cold shutdown, decontamination work, reactor building coverings, ice wall, groundwater bypass, development/upgrade of ALPS, fuel removal, reactor surveys, robot development and deployment, treated water release, ocean surveys, rearing of fish in treated water.

There's all sorts of information out there, but it takes a while to get through so I'm not surprised that people don't know what's going on. I'm no expert, but have been reading since the start so am "reasonably" aware of the status.

The pump sending cooling water to the spent fuel pool started working again at around 6:20 p.m. after a high voltage circuit breaker tripped at around 8:35

10 hours before it started working again, were there personnel around?

No injuries were reported.

Pump sending water to spent fuel pool stopped due to power failure.

Emergency power kicked in but failed to restart pump.

Smoke plumed from reactor's turbine building.

Also stopped ventilation and radiation monitoring systems of incineratore building.

They're still probing the cause/s but surely just a minor glitch , nothing to worry about.

Just another day in tepco.

img_map.jpg (727×850) (tepco.co.jp)

Fukushima 1 (Daiichi) is the top plant.

The no. 5 & 6 reactors, as mentioned above, were not affected in the same way as the now-famous 1 to 4. Even so, no one likes the machinery to sudenly let you down. That is why they have (working?) back-up systems.

sudenly = suddenly