Caroline Kennedy, the US Ambassador to Japan, spent three hours visiting the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Wednesday as part of her first trip as ambassador to Fukushima Prefecture. While touring the site, Kennedy observed spent fuel removal operations at the Unit 4 reactor, visited the shared control room for the Unit 1 […]
Tokyo Electric, the utility decommissioning the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, determined that human error is the most likely cause for the alarms which stopped work removing spent fuel assemblies from the Reactor 4 spent fuel pool. TEPCO officials believe that around 9:30 AM on Wednesday, a worker attempted to operate a crane […]
Workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have been forced to halt removal of spent fuel rods from the Reactor 4 spent fuel pool. The pool contains 1,533 fuel rods, 1,331 of which are highly radioactive spent fuel rods. As of Wednesday, 550 fuel rods have been retrieved from the spent fuel pool. Around […]
In the three years since the start of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster there has been a plethora of drastic changes made to the landscape of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant including; new processing facilities for radioactive water, a farm of storage tanks for contaminated water, new cooling systems, a new carpet of thick […]
March 14th, 2011 – TEPCO Requests US Embassy Help Extinguish Fire at Unit 4 – Pages From C146301-02X – Grou…
An analysis performed by the Japanese version of the Sandia experts on the spent fuel pool at Fukushima Daiichi Reactor 4. April 20th, 2011 – JNES Assessment of Spent Fuel Pool at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 – Pages from C146301-02X…
In April of 2011, a consortium of industrial and governmental organizations established to provide advice to Japan in its efforts to stabilize the conditions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, authored an analysis of Tokyo Electric’s roadmap to restore stability at the crippled facility. The consortium was made up of representatives from General Electric, […]
On Monday at 15:18, TEPCO workers began work removing spent fuel from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 spent fuel pool, which holds 1,533 assemblies. Of the 1,533 assemblies, 1,311 are spent fuel, the other 222 are unused. This project has been labeled by some as one of the most dangerous nuclear operations in human […]
March 31st, 2011 – TEPCO’s Assessment of Structural Damage to Unit 1, 3, And 4 Reactor Buildings by Enformable
Estimate time for boil-dry times for a typical spent fuel pool Source: RTM Table D-1 (see figure below) Assumptions: (1) Full core recently discharged (see box in figure) (2) 100 days after shutdown (full core unloaded) (3) constant decay heat at 100 days on (4) Neglect sensible heating from the table (- 10 hr) (5) […]
Monday night, a power outage at the Main Anti-Earthquake Building at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station suspended operations at three spent fuel pool cooling systems and other critical plant facilities. TEPCO was later criticized for a three hour delay between the power outage and their notification of the event to the press. After further […]
The reactor containment structures which house the nuclear reactors at Fukushima made by GE, Hitachi, and Toshiba, have so many holes in them that they are preventing workers from making any substantial progress on improving conditions inside of the destroyed reactors, and will ultimately delay the removal of melted fuel from the reactor buildings, the […]
Today, TEPCO published nearly two thousand photos of the first weeks of the response to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. During the early days of the accident workers were temporarily evacuated multiple times due to concerns over the skyrocketing radiation levels on site, and unstable conditions in the reactors. These newly released photos help provide […]
For the better part of the last 6 months, workers have been preparing Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 for the extraction of the spent fuel from the spent fuel pool of the destroyed reactor building. They have removed the debris from atop the reactor building, and worked on preparing the structure to be covered by a […]
TEPCO plans to start removing spent fuel from the Unit 4 reactor building starting in November of this year, and has already started bringing in cranes and heavy equipment for the removal work. With over 1,500 spent fuel assemblies resting in a building visibly decimated by the hydrogen explosion, more spent fuel is stored at […]
Due to concerns over the ability of the destroyed reactor building to withstand earthquake activity as well as emergency operations, TEPCO has decided to speed up operations one year ahead of schedule to remove the spent nuclear fuel from the spent fuel pool. The utility will start removing fuel rods in November of 2013, a […]
One and a half years after the March 11th disaster at Fukushima, workers on-site face immense difficulties in decommissioning work at the crippled nuclear power plant. The utility now admits that the explosion at Reactor 4 severely compromised the reactor building, and that more work is required to ensure its ability to withstand earthquakes in […]
In July, workers at Fukushima Daiichi removed 2 unused fuel assemblies from the spent fuel pool of Reactor 4. On Monday, TEPCO examined one of the assemblies to determine the extent of the damage to the fuel rods. The investigation was carried out on the operation floor of the common fuel pool building. Workers removed […]
Pages From ML12096A069 – March 24th, 2011 – Fukushima Daiichi Reactors Spent Fuel Pool Details – Pool Locat…
From: PMT03 Hoc Sent: Sunday, March 20, 2011 5:26 PM To: Hoc, PMT12; PMT07 Hoc Subject: RE: Utube video of workers Fukushima Daiichi Worker Interviews Source: NHK World (www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc3BKldg3-c) Received from ET02 at 16:37 on 3/20/11 Summary: Interviewed two Fukushima Daiichi workers. One was on the Unit 4 refueling floor when the quake occurred. No […]