The
idea of pumping water for cooling was never going to be anything but a “machine
for generating radioactive water,”
flag_Russiaflag-japanRussia
Offers Fukushima Cleanup Help as Tepco Reaches Out By Yuriy Humber & Jacob
Adelman - Aug 25, 2013 Russia repeated
an offer first made two years ago to help Japan clean up its accident-ravaged
Fukushima nuclear station, welcoming Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501)’s decision
to seek outside help.
Fukushima-water tank-leaking
As Tokyo Electric pumps thousands of metric tons of
water through the wrecked Fukushima station to cool its melted cores, the
tainted run-off was found to be leaking into groundwater and the ocean. The
approach to cooling and decommissioning the station will need to change and
include technologies developed outside of Japan if the cleanup is to succeed,
said Vladimir Asmolov, first deputy director general of Rosenergoatom, the
state-owned Russian nuclear utility.
“In our globalized nuclear industry we don’t have
national accidents, they are all international,” Asmolov said. Since Japan’s
new government took over in December, talks on cooperating between the two
countries on the Fukushima cleanup have turned “positive” and Russia is ready
to offer its assistance, he said by phone from Moscow last week.
After 29 months of trying to contain radiation from
Fukushima’s molten atomic cores, Tokyo Electric said last week it will reach
out for international expertise in handling the crisis. The water leaks alone
have so far sent more than 100 times the annual norms of radioactive elements
into the ocean, raising concern it will enter the food chain through fish……..
Vast
Volumes
The sheer quantity of water used is the most at a
nuclear accident since the 1972 London convention banned the dumping of waste
and radioactive water into the sea, said Peter Burns, formerly Australia’s
representative on the United Nations scientific committee on the effects of
atomic radiation.
“Until they figure out how to deal with such vast
volumes of water, how to manage it, the problem” including of leaks will
persist, Burns, a retired radiation physicist, said from Melbourne.
Retaining thousands of tons of radioactive water in
tanks was the wrong strategy from the start and Tepco’s handling of the task is
a “textbook picture of a failure of management,” Michael Friedlander, who has
13 years of experience running nuclear stations in the U.S., said in an
interview with Bloomberg TV in Hong Kong.
Pumping
Water
The idea of pumping water for cooling was never
going to be anything but a “machine for generating radioactive water,” Asmolov
said. Other more complex methods such as the use of special absorbents like
thermoxide to clean contaminated water and the introduction of air cooling
should be used, he said……. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-25/russia-offers-to-help-clean-up-fukushima-as-tepco-calls-for-help.html
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