Robots TEPCO found high levels of radiation in the reactor buildings

April 19, 2011, 1: 40 pm EDT by Yuji Okada, Michio Nakayama and Tsuyoshi Inajima

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April 19 (Bloomberg) - Robots sent in three buildings at the nuclear Fukushima Dai-Ichi crippled detected Japan radiation too toxic for humans after the plant operator with a plan to end the crisis in the six to nine months.Measurements show an hour in the building of the reactor No. 3 would expose humans to more than one-fifth of the radiation that the Japan has said is that most workers can withstand a year, the Atomic security agency said yesterday. The buildings were damaged by explosions in the days after a magnitude-9 quake and tsunami March 11 assommé air conditioners, triggering the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl 1986.A radiation in Fukushima Dai-Ichi station sustained decline can be achieved in the three moisTokyo Electric Power Co. said in a statement establishing his plans. After a judgment of the cold, where basic reactor temperatures drop below 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit), can be reached in six months, he said. "TEPCO should be faster than its described on two particular areas: circulate radioactive water in pressure vessels and covering the reactor buildings to avoid releases of radiation,"Tadashi Narabayashi, Professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Hokkaido said today.Over the next three months, Tepco, as the utility is known, plans to fill the vessels of containment of the reactor No. 1 and no. 3 units with water, the company said in its statement on April 17. The utility seal the vessel of the No. 2 reactor, which is probably damaged, before flooding it.Leak at sea "If flood us the ship damaged, contaminated water leakage increases", Tepco Vice President Sakae Muto told journalists in Tokyo on April 17. "We will continue to inject water with care and monitor the volume of water filtered.".Water pumped far overflowed in basements and the trenches, with some of them leaking into the ocean.TEPCO said earlier that it will begin draining the highly radioactive water in a trench near the No. 2 reactor today, Junichi Matsumoto, an official at Tokyo Electric, said to journalists. The power utility plans to move from 10 000 tonnes of contaminated water, a waste treatment unit and expects to finalize the transfer, Matsumoto said.Robots, RadiationTwo iRobot Corp. robots sent April 17 to check if humans can enter again the site found as high as 49 millisieverts per hour of radiation levels in the building of the No. 1 engine and up to 57 millisieverts in building No. 3said the nuclear and industrial safety agency.The cumulative maximum level of nuclear workers was raised 250 100 millisieverts millisieverts by the Ministry of health of the Japan on March 15. Exhibition totalling more than 100 millisieverts a year is the level below which any increase in cancer is obvious, according to the world nuclear Association in robot London.Another was sent in the reactor No. 2 building yesterday and recorded levels of 4.1 millisieverts per hourspokesman Tetsuya Terasawa told journalists today.TEPCO shares fell 8.4% 428 yen in Tokyo today and Exchange to 449 yen at 1: 46 pm. The stock is down by almost 80 percent since the earthquake and tsunami, which left people approximately 28,000 dead or missing.Pellets of fuel in no. 1, 2 and 3 reactors can melt at the plant, the nuclear safety agency, said today, in the first official confirmation of damage to the nuclei.Nitrogen injection "Believed that pellets of fuel in the reactors have melted", the Agency said in a report. "The extent of melting cannot be confirmed until the fuel rods have been removed."TEPCO provides inject nitrogen into the vessels of containment of the No. 2 and no. 3 reactor late April, said Muto. The injected utility inert gas in no. 1 unit this month to prevent explosions hydrogen. "Injection of nitrogen is not evil, but has no meaning, it has just one like that you do something,"said Michael Friedlander, a former nuclear engineer U.S. based in Hong Kong. "It's a question of resources and the population;" These people could be better used. "Three to six months after the initial phase of its plan, Tepco will attempt a closure cold reactors No. 1, 2 and 3, the company said. 4, 5 And 6 reactors were closed at the time of the disaster.The utility will also cover the No. 1, 3 and reactor buildings 4 as a temporary measure to reduce emissions of radiation after structures were damaged by hydrogen explosions last month, according to the Declaration. "TEPCO should cover buildings as soon as possible, at least before the typhoon season of Japan, because the rain and wind can cause leakage of radioactive water in spent fuel pools,"stated Narabayashi at the University of Hokkaido."

-With the help of Kyung Bok Cho and Taku Kato in Tokyo. Editors: Aaron Sheldrick, Amit Prakash

To contact the reporters on this story: Yuji Okada at Tokyo to the yokada6@bloomberg.net; Michio Nakayama in Tokyo at the mnakayama4@bloomberg.net. Tsuyoshi Inajima in Tokyo at the tinajima@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Amit Prakash to aprakash1@bloomberg.net

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Leak found in reactor pit as Japan PM tours disaster zone - Reuters

By Kiyoshi Takenaka and CHISA Fujioka

TOKYO | Sat Apr 2, 2011 9: 38 to the EDT

Tokyo (Reuters) - Prime Minister of Japan made his first visit to the country's tsunami-ravaged region on Saturday as officials debate to end the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl said they may have discovered why radiation into the sea were leaking has.

Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) (9501.T) said it had found a crack in a concrete pit, when his No. 2 reactor in Fukushima, the water was leaking measuring 1,000 millisieverts radiation per hour.

"With radiation levels is rising in the sea water near we have plant, which attempts, confirm the reason why, and in this context, this could be a source," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, Deputy Head of the nuclear and industrial safety agency (NISA).

It shows show, however: "we can not really say for certain, until we have studied the results."

TEPCO pouring concrete into the pit, to stop the leak has begun, he said.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan spoke to refugees living in a makeshift camp in the fishing village of Rikuzentakata, destroyed by the tsunami which met on 11 March when Japan was rocked by a massive earthquake left 28,000 dead and missing.

"It is kind of a long battle, but the Government will work hard with you together until the end." I would like to do their best, also "Kyodo News Agency Kan tell a survivor in a school, which is now an evacuation protection of Japan's northeastern coast shattered."

But some survivors were angry to visit Kan three weeks, the Government was accused of doing little, to you to rebuild their lives under the twisted rubble.

"The timing of his visit too late," said Ryoko Otsubo. "I wish, he had visited this place before." I wanted him to see the mountains of rubble where there no roads. "Now, the streets are clean."

Despite its tsunami dykes Rikuzentaka was flattened in a wasteland of mud and rubble and most of its 23,000 inhabitants killed or injured, many of the waves swept away.

"A person who used a house near the coast have told me"Where I should build a House after this?", so I promoted this person and said support the Government until the end," Kan told reporters.

Unpopular and under pressure to quit or call a snap poll before the cataclysm, Kan was criticized for his management of Japan's humanitarian and nuclear crisis and his leadership in question remains.

"There are some evacuation centres that lack electricity and water." There are people who even go can search for the dead. I want him attention, "Kyodo Kazuo SATO, a 45-year-old fisherman, quoted saying as."

Kan later entered that zone 20 kilometres (12 miles) a sports facility serves evacuation and visited J village just inside the zone, trying as the headquarters for emergency teams, plant cool the six reactor Fukushima Daiichi.

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Reactor pit found leaking radioactive water into the sea

Although higher than normal levels of radiation in the ocean water in the vicinity of the plant have been found in the last few days, the breach discovered the first identified direct leak of such high levels of radiation into the sea Saturday.

The leak, reactor, see a maintenance pit in the vicinity of the plant No. 2 is a fresh reminder of the dangerous side effects of the strategy of the reactors and spent fuel storage pools, cooling of in them hundreds of tons of water per day pumps. While much of the water has evaporated, a significant portion has transformed also into runoff.

Said the Japanese authorities, they have little choice right now, because the normal cooling systems in the work is function untüchtig are and released more radiation, meltdown would complete when the reactors were allowed, or if the Poles caught fire.

Three workers at the plant, operated by Tokyo electric power company, have hurt was by you a reactor complex jump into pools of contaminated water.

Workers are the excess water draining race, but they have struggled to find out how to save it. On Saturday, some contaminated water in a barge to release was transmitted from space in other tanks on land. A second barge came also.

Satoshi Sato, a consultant to the nuclear energy industry and a former engineer said "More water, the more problems adding, that they generate," with General Electric. "It is only a matter of time before the leaks in the ocean grow."

Hidehiko Nishiyama, Deputy Director-General who said Japan's nuclear and Agency for industrial, it is possible that water in the pit of the reactor, although it also possible that it came from other sources, such as the leaky pipes. In both cases would each leak by the enormous amounts of water is used, aggravated to cool the reactor.

Tetsuo Iguchi, a professor in the Department of quantum engineering at Nagoya University, said that the leak could be discovered that Saturday raised fears that the water contaminated by many more undiscovered sources from seeping. He said that, if workers quickly leaking could stop Tokyo Electric could be forced to evaluate the food and bleed strategy, where they flood the reactors and fuel ponds with water and let then the steam, which you created.

Mr. Iguchi said "It is crucial, the fuel rods to keep cooling, but these leaks are dangerous, on the other hand,". "they can to keep high amounts of radiation longer leaking much not the work," he said.

Workers discovered a crack about eight inches wide in the maintenance of mine which is between the No. 2 reactor and the sea and cable is used to power said sea water pumps, Japan's nuclear regulator.

The space above the water in the sea leaking had a radiation reading of more than 1,000 millisieverts per hour, Mr. Nishiyama said, a level which could be dangerous for the people. Tests of water into the mine later showed the presence of a million becquerels per liter of iodine-131, a radioactive substance. That iodine 10,000 times what is normal, that water is in the works. Iodine-131 has a half-life of about eight days.

Also, Mr. Nishiyama said that higher than normal level of radioactive substances, about 25 km south of Fukushima plant, were much further recognized as was previously been reported.

At the time the leak was discovered, deep pit with four to eight inch contaminated water was filled according to the Tokyo Electric. But it was impossible to immediately judge how much water had fled and such for a while.

Workers to try that crack fill with concrete started had Mr Nishiyama said late Saturday.

Saturday's announcement a leak came a day after Energy Secretary Steven Chu, said the United States, that about 70 per cent of the core of a reactor Fukushima work suffered heavy damage. The statement was on how close the system to a complete meltdown came after it was hit by a severe earthquake and massive tsunami on 11 March the most specific yet by an American official.

The crisis in the nuclear power plant has overshadowed the recovery efforts on the way to Japan since the quake. Police National Agency of the country said that the official death toll from the disaster 11.800, had surpassed, while more than 15,500 as missing have been listed.

Saturday, his first visit to the region since the disaster, and he promised everything possible to help do former Prime Minister Naoto Kan.

Mr Kan said "We are together with you to the end," while riding Rikuzentakata, a town of about 20,000 people, which was destroyed. "You try your best everyone."

Dressed in a blue work jacket, Mr Kan also with refugees in a reason and Hauptschule stranded visited and then visited a sports complex about 20 miles south of nuclear plant. The plant had turned into a staging area for firefighters, self-defense forces and workers of Tokyo Electric.

Ken Ijichi and Moshe comma contributed reporting.

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