Seventeen have passed safety checks and only 10 have resumed operation.Īccording the paper laying out the new policy, nuclear power serves "an important role as a carbon-free baseload energy source in achieving supply stability and carbon neutrality" and pledged to "sustain use of nuclear power into the future." Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said he planned to get the Cabinet to approve the policy and submit necessary bills to Parliament.Īs part of the new policy, the Economy and Industry Ministry has drafted a plan to allow extensions every 10 years for reactors after 30 years of operation while also permitting utilities to subtract offline periods in calculating reactors' operational life. Utility companies have applied for restarts at 27 reactors in the past decade. Still, restart approvals for idled nuclear reactors have come slowly since the Fukushima disaster, which led to stricter safety standards. Japan signals a shift back to nuclear energy DW In focus Russia's war in Ukraine Diversity Experts are mulling the extension of reactors' operational lifetimes from the present. TEPCO hopes to use a robotic arm later this year to remove an initial scoop of melted fuel from Unit 2, where internal robotic probes have made the most progress.Energy Nuclear power is gaining support after years of decline. One decade since explosions rocked Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, researchers look back at how the ocean was impacted by the radioactivity fallout from the event, and discuss how By Laura Castanon April 1, 2021. Those are key to developing equipment and a strategy for the safe and efficient removal of the melted fuel, allowing the reactor’s eventual decommissioning.ĭetails of how the highly radioactive material can be safely removed, stored and disposed of at the end of the cleanup have not been decided. Fukushima and the Ocean: A decade of disaster response. The investigation at Unit 1 aims to measure the melted fuel mounds, map them in three dimensions, analyze isotopes and their radioactivity, and collect samples, TEPCO officials said. Photograph: Hiro Komae/AP Fukushima Fukushima: Japan insists release of 1.3m tonnes of ‘treated’ water is safe Neighbouring countries and local fishers express concern as 12th anniversary of. TEPCO said it will conduct additional probes after analyzing the data and images collected by the first robot.įive other robots, co-developed by Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy and the International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning, a government-funded consortium, will be used in the investigation over the next several months. The fuel at Unit 1 is submerged in highly radioactive water as deep as 2 meters (6.5 feet). The robot probe of the Unit 1 reactor began Tuesday and was the first since 2017, when an earlier robot failed to obtain any images of melted fuel because of the extremely high radiation and interior structural damage. The annual exposure limit for plant workers is set at 50 millisievert. Takahara said further probes will be needed to confirm the objects in the images.Īt one location, the robot measured a radiation level of 2 sievert, which is fatal for humans, Takahara said. Up until 2011, Japan was generating some 30 of electricity from its. TEPCO spokesperson Kenichi Takahara said the piles of debris rose from the bottom of the container, including some inside the pedestal - a structure directly beneath the core - suggesting the mounds were melted fuel that fell in the area. This came under review following the 2011 Fukushima accident but has been confirmed. Himalayan glaciers could lose 80% of their volume if global warming isn't controlled, study finds VIENNA, 9 March (UN Information Service) A decade after the triple tragedy that occurred in Japan in March 2011, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) said that future health effects, e.g. Its removal is a daunting task that officials say will take 30-40 years. Most of their highly radioactive fuel fell to the bottom of their containment vessels, making its removal extremely difficult.Ī previous attempt to send a small robot with cameras into the Unit 1 reactor failed, but images captured this week by a ROV-A robot show broken structures, pipes and mounds of what appears to be melted fuel and other debris submerged in cooling water, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings said Thursday.Ībout 900 tons of melted nuclear fuel remain inside the plant’s three damaged reactors, including about 280 tons in Unit 1. TOKYO (AP) - A remote-controlled robot has captured images of what appears to be mounds of nuclear fuel that melted and fell to the bottom of the most damaged reactor at Japan’s wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant, officials said Thursday.Ī massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011 damaged cooling systems at the power plant, causing the meltdown of three reactor cores.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |