Exhausted Japanese engineers scrambled to fix a power cable to two reactors at a tsunami-crippled nuclear power station on Friday as they fought to prevent a deadly radiation release in the world’s worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster.
If their tactics fail, the last resort may be to bury the 40-year-old plant in sand and concrete to prevent a catastrophic radiation release, the method used to seal huge leakages from Chernobyl after a huge blast there.
The dangerous and complex challenge for about 300 workers at the Fukushima plant in northeastern Japan, has prompted an international reassessment of nuclear safety.
At the plant, from where people within 20 km have been evacuated to avoid radiation, engineers were hoping to attach power lines to two of the six reactors in order to restart water pumps and cool overheated nuclear fuel rods.
Workers also sprayed water on the No.3 reactor, considered the most critical after steam was seen blowing off, a sign the rods could be becoming exposed.
Japan has raised the severity rating of the nuclear crisis from Level 4 to Level 5 on the seven-level INES international scale, putting it on par with America’s Three Mile Island accident in 1979, although some experts say it is more serious. Chernobyl was a 7 on that scale.
The operation to avert a large-scale radiation leak has overshadowed the humanitarian aspect of Japan’s toughest moment since World War II, after it was struck last Friday by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and a 10-metre tsunami.
Around 6,500 have been confirmed killed in the double natural disaster, which turned whole towns into waterlogged wastelands, and 10,300 remain missing with many feared dead.
Some 390,000 people, including many among Japan’s aging population, are homeless and battling near-freezing temperatures in makeshift shelters in northeastern coastal areas.
Under enormous pressure over its handling of the combination of crises, Japan’s government conceded it could have moved faster at the outset.
“An unprecedented huge earthquake and tsunami hit Japan. Things that had not been anticipated in terms of the general disaster response took place,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said on Friday.
The first step will be to restore power to pumps for reactors No. 1 and 2, and possibly 4, by Saturday, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, Japan’s nuclear safety agency spokesman.
By Sunday, the government expects to connect electricity to pumps for its damaged reactor No.3 — a focal point because of its use of mixed oxides, or mox, containing uranium and highly toxic plutonium.
No comments:
Post a Comment