Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has announced that the “ice wall” (formally known as the “Land-Side Impermeable Wall”) under construction at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan has been critically affected by rainfall from recent typhoons that have melted parts of the ice structure, allowing new pathways for highly contaminated water to […]
This week TEPCO officials at a meeting with officials from the Nuclear Regulation Authority in Japan admitted that the ice wall they promoted as an impermeable barrier to prevent groundwater from entering the crippled reactor buildings and mixing with highly radioactive water has failed to work as billed and is technically incapable of blocking off […]
Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) admitted last week that they should have declared a meltdown within days of the March 11th earthquake and tsunami that crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, instead of delaying the public announcement for months. “We apologize for the great inconvenience and worry the delay caused”, a representative for TEPCO […]
Many people know of my interest in the release of information through the Freedom of Information Act by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In October 2014, I participated in a meeting with Dave Lochbaum of Union of Concerned Scientists, Lawrence Criscione (who works for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but was participating in the meeting as a […]
Workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan used remote-controlled cameras to observe the current conditions inside of the Unit 3 containment vessel. The cameras were also equipped with radiation detectors and temperature monitoring sensors. On Tuesday, the work was focused on the upper areas of the containment vessel. Next, TEPCO will investigate […]
Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), has signed an agreement to acquire robots that can withstand the critically high radiation levels in the Fukushima Daiichi reactor containment vessels with the Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) of France. CEA, a government-funded organization, is experienced with decommissioning nuclear reactor facilities and reprocessing facilities. In order to […]
The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) is overwhelmed by the massive amounts of contaminated water piling up at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and 300 tons more is being generated every day. Groundwater passing underneath the nuclear facility is being continually contaminated as is moves through the site and the crippled reactor buildings. TEPCO’s “subdrain […]
The Nuclear Regulation Authority of Japan (NRA) announced on Thursday that two ABWR reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) have been placed on a priority list for safety screening. This is one of the first steps required to restart the nuclear reactors. Despite the announcement by […]
Tokyo Electric has announced a new plan to attempt to retrieve the fuel handling machine that fell into the Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3 spent fuel pool. TEPCO has been working to remove the fuel handling machine from the spent fuel pool in parts. Previous attempts to retrieve debris from the spent fuel pool were halted […]
Tokyo Electric, the operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, has released a document during a lawsuit brought by over 40 shareholders which reveals the utilities acknowledgment that tsunami defenses at the plant were not adequate. The internal document from 2008 noted that TEPCO executives had agreed that it would be “indispensable” to […]
Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the utility that owns and operated the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, has not used any uranium to produce electricity since the March 11th, 2011 nuclear disaster. None of the reactors owned by TEPCO have been restarted and remain offline. The utility has been struggling to stay ahead […]
Engineers from Hitachi-GE revealed the latest robot designed to help engineers understand the conditions inside of the crippled nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan where high radiation levels prevent humans from physically accessing the reactor buildings for inspection. The remote-controlled snake-like robot is only 2 feet long with a lamp […]
Tokyo Electric has determined that it will cease use of AREVA’s decontamination system, which uses chemicals to remove radioactive materials from water, as it has not lived up to expectations since it was installed. The utility will file an application with the Nuclear Regulation Authority in order to scrap the system. The decontamination system was […]
For the last three and a half years, TEPCO engineers have been working to better characterize the state of the melted nuclear fuel in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors. Now those officials believe that most of the melted nuclear fuel in the Unit 3 reactor melted through the reactor pressure vessel and collected at the […]
TEPCO officials have admitted that groundwater bypass operations are failing to reduce tons of water from entering the crippled reactor buildings at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. According to TEPCO, at least 400 tons of groundwater flow into reactor buildings each day where it comes into contact with extremely contaminated materials. The utility announced […]
Tokyo Electric announced that it has resumed full operation of the ALPS system used to decontaminated radioactive water at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The ALPS system is designed to process up to 750 tons of radioactive water per day when operating at full capacity. It is the first time that all three lines […]
In September 2013, Tokyo Electric announced that it planned to drill freeze wells at three feet intervals to create an ‘ice wall’ nearly a mile long at the Unit 2 and Unit 3 reactors, where an estimated 11,000 tons of contaminated wastewater is believed to have collected, in an attempt to stem contaminated water from […]
Tokyo Electric has announced annual profits of $4.3 billion USD, compared to a net loss of $6.6 billion USD in the previous year. The utility, which recently found itself on the edge of a financial cliff, benefited not only by hiking its electricity rates, but also from an enormous bailout from the Japanese government. Japan […]
Tokyo Electric is planning a more expansive investigation of the damaged containment vessels at Fukushima Daiichi Reactor 1, Reactor 2, and Reactor 3. The utility hopes that the information gathered during the investigations will help plan fuel removal operations. Previous investigations uncovered that the damaged containment vessels are likely not capable of holding water, as […]
Tokyo Electric, operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, is hoping to draw groundwater and release it into the Pacific Ocean before it becomes highly contaminated while passing through the facility. On Monday, a TEPCO official speaking at a meeting with fishermen in Iwaki City said the utility tested samples from the 12 wells […]