Levels of highly radioactive water have risen by about six centimetres in the turbine building and utility trenches of unit two at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant, with increases also seen in the turbine buildings for units 3 and 4, the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum (JAIF) has said.
Russian state nuclear energy agency Rosatom has said it is willing to “notify and consult” neighbouring states about its plans for building new nuclear reactor units and other nuclear facilities.
Japanese authorities underestimated the tsunami hazard for several nuclear sites, but their response to the March 2011 nuclear accident at Fukushima-Daiichi has been “exemplary”, a preliminary report from International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) experts has concluded.
America’s Blue Ribbon Commission which was set up when the President when he decided to halt work on theYucccaMountain waste repository is scheduled to produce its first report before the end of July. The Comission has released extensive information on the points raised and arguments made to it and these have been set out in an article in Radwaste Solutions, an authoritative publication of the American Nuclear Society. The major task was to consider what is to be done with the huge stockpile of used fuel (spent fuel) which has built up at operating nuclear power plants and is held either in storage pools or in dry storage transport flasks.
Tokyo Electric Power Company, TECO, has confirmed the suspicion that most of the fuel assemblies in the number 1 reactor at Fukashima nuclear power plant melted down within 16 hours of the dreadful earthquake and tsunami on 11 March. The corium (mixture of molten fuel and other structures in the reactor core) collected at the bottom of the reactor vessel. Uniquely on a boiling water reactor the control rods enter from the bottom of the vessel and some of the many penetration developed small leaks and released radioactive material.About 20 hours after the reactor shut down the operators managed to get a flow of sea water directed at the vessel and this caused a reduction in temperature and stopped larger leaks developing.
