Crippled Fukushima Reactors Officially Closed
Apr 20, 2012 2:08:50 GMT -5
Post by PrisonerOfHope on Apr 20, 2012 2:08:50 GMT -5
News Flash: Crippled Fukushima Reactors Officially Closed
By Phred Dvorak
It’s official: Japan now has four fewer nuclear reactors than it did the day before.
Reuters
Tepco announced on April 19 four reactors at Fukushima Daiichi have officially been taken out of service.
That’s because on April 19, one year, one month and one week after Fukushima Daiichi units 1 through 4 lost power and either melted down or blew up, operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. formally announced it had taken them out of service forever, never to be restarted ever again.
JRT readers may be wondering why it took so long for this to happen. After all, by the end of March 2011, most of the fuel rods of units 1, 2 and 3 had melted, while explosions had destroyed the reactor buildings at units 1, 3 and 4. The radiation around most of those units is still so high that people can’t go inside.
Tepco says its board of directors had actually bitten the bullet and decided to decommission the units last May. But they only started on the paperwork needed in December, after the government had declared the crisis stage of the Fukushima Daiichi accident to be over.
Since this wasn’t a routine power-plant decommissioning, it took about three months for the company to confirm what the right procedure under Japan’s electric utilities law was, says Tepco spokesman Yoshikazu Nagai. Tepco submitted the paperwork on March 30 of this year, and it took effect 20 days later. Bureaucracy has now caught up with reality.
Of course, the fate of the rest of Japan’s 50 reactors considered operational is still very much up in the air. Only one — on the northern island of Hokkaido — is still operating, and that one is scheduled to go offline for routine maintenance on May 5. All the other reactors that have been shut down for maintenance over the past year have stayed off in the face of growing public concern over their safety — though the government is pushing hard to restart two in western Japan.
And what about Tepco’s six remaining Fukushima reactors? Two are on the Fukushima Daiichi compound, where the radiation is still so high that workers wear hazmat suits and full face masks. Four more are at the nearby Fukushima Daini plant, which is inside the contaminated no-go zone. The governor of Fukushima has called for an end to nuclear power in the prefecture.
Tepco says nothing has been decided yet.
blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/04/20/news-flash-crippled-fukushima-reactors-officially-closed/
By Phred Dvorak
It’s official: Japan now has four fewer nuclear reactors than it did the day before.
Reuters
Tepco announced on April 19 four reactors at Fukushima Daiichi have officially been taken out of service.
That’s because on April 19, one year, one month and one week after Fukushima Daiichi units 1 through 4 lost power and either melted down or blew up, operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. formally announced it had taken them out of service forever, never to be restarted ever again.
JRT readers may be wondering why it took so long for this to happen. After all, by the end of March 2011, most of the fuel rods of units 1, 2 and 3 had melted, while explosions had destroyed the reactor buildings at units 1, 3 and 4. The radiation around most of those units is still so high that people can’t go inside.
Tepco says its board of directors had actually bitten the bullet and decided to decommission the units last May. But they only started on the paperwork needed in December, after the government had declared the crisis stage of the Fukushima Daiichi accident to be over.
Since this wasn’t a routine power-plant decommissioning, it took about three months for the company to confirm what the right procedure under Japan’s electric utilities law was, says Tepco spokesman Yoshikazu Nagai. Tepco submitted the paperwork on March 30 of this year, and it took effect 20 days later. Bureaucracy has now caught up with reality.
Of course, the fate of the rest of Japan’s 50 reactors considered operational is still very much up in the air. Only one — on the northern island of Hokkaido — is still operating, and that one is scheduled to go offline for routine maintenance on May 5. All the other reactors that have been shut down for maintenance over the past year have stayed off in the face of growing public concern over their safety — though the government is pushing hard to restart two in western Japan.
And what about Tepco’s six remaining Fukushima reactors? Two are on the Fukushima Daiichi compound, where the radiation is still so high that workers wear hazmat suits and full face masks. Four more are at the nearby Fukushima Daini plant, which is inside the contaminated no-go zone. The governor of Fukushima has called for an end to nuclear power in the prefecture.
Tepco says nothing has been decided yet.
blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/04/20/news-flash-crippled-fukushima-reactors-officially-closed/