Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Engineers are working to get water plant in Japan

.- Japanese engineers struggled on Sunday to remove radioactive water from the damaged nuclear power plant after the radiation levels rose seawater near the plant, where it has been more than two weeks since it was affected by a major earthquake and a tsunami. Friday's tests showed that levels of radioactive iodine in sea water 30 kilometers from the seaside resort rose 250 thousand times above normal but was not considered a threat to marine life or food safety, said Nuclear Security Agency and Industry of Japan.

"Ocean currents disperse the particles of radiation and would be heavily diluted by the time it reaches consumers through fish and seaweed," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a senior official of the agency. Despite this statement, the news could raise international concern about the export of marine products in Japan.

Several countries have already banned imports of milk and food to areas surrounding the plant Daiichi, while others are monitoring the Japanese seafood. The protracted efforts to prevent catastrophic fusion plant 40 years of Judeo antique repairs have also intensified international nuclear energy after the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck northeastern Japan two weeks ago.

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said it is time to reassess the global nuclear safety regime. The crisis in the plant, 240 kilometers north of Tokyo, has tarnished a great relief and recovery effort of the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and massive tsunami that caused the March 11 that killed more than 27,100 people dead or missing northeastern Japan.

Engineers trying to stabilize the plant must take after radioactive water was found in buildings of three of the six reactors at the complex. On Thursday, three workers were hospitalized from the reactor after stepping on three levels of radiation water 10 000 times higher than those normally found in a reactor.

That raised fears that the container of the core can be damaged. An official with the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, said in a press conference on Sunday that experts had yet to determine where to put some contaminated water while engineers are still trying to restore full power of the plant.

TEPCO said it was using freshwater instead of seawater to cool at least some of the reactors after concerns arose that salt deposits could hinder the cooling process. Two of the reactors at the plant now are considered safe, but the other four are unstable and occasionally emit steam and smoke.

However, the nuclear safety agency said on Saturday that the temperature and pressure in all the reactors have been stabilized. The government has said that the situation "is not even close" to being solved, but not impaired. "We are making efforts to prevent it from getting worse - we have restored power and inserted fresh water - and give basic steps for improvement, but I think we can not be complacent," said Chief Cabinet Saturday Yukio Edan at a news conference.

More than 700 engineers are working in shifts to stabilize the plant, but there is no end in sight. At Three Mile Island, the worst nuclear accident in the United States, workers took just four days to stabilize the reactor, which suffered a partial meltdown. No one was injured and there was no release of radiation above the legal limit.

In Chernobyl, in Ukraine, the worst nuclear accident in history, it took weeks to "stabilize" what was left of the plant and months to clean up radioactive materials and cover the place with a steel and concrete sarcophagus. So far, we detected no significant levels of radiation outside the vicinity of the plant in Fukushima.

The Department of Energy United States said in its website (http://blog. Energy. gov / content / situation-japan /) since March 19 were not deposited significant amounts of radiological materials around the plant, according to tests released Friday.

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