Japan nuclear power plant - no power !

[James48843]

This just in.... three of Japan's Fukishima nuclear power plant control rod cooling water pools have suffered a major power failure, and been without cooling power for the last three hours.


No idea what went wrong, or when power can be restored.

Technicians scrambling to try and figure out what happened, while temperatures begin to rise.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/03/18/japan-daiichi-nuclear-plant-failure.html

That is not good news.

 

[nnuut]

Deja vu all over again?

 

[wavecoder]

they need to close that **** down already

 

[Sensei]

Meh. Not on the local news, not in the WSJ Asia. The article James linked says itself that the cores are safe for 4 days, at which point they expect to have the problem solved.

Sniper, settle down dude. What do you think they're trying to do? Chernobyl was 27 years ago, and they're still working on the permanent sarcophagus. Some people will spend their entire career with TEPCO doing nothing but working to contain the reactors. Career opportunity, I guess.

 

[k0nkuzh0n]

they need to close that **** down already

I'm pretty sure its not making power. The rods in the cooling tanks aren't exactly easy to get rid of. I mean they could sell them to Iran or north korea pretty quickly..

 

[Frixxxx]

Power to be restored today, partially restored now!

Link

 

[Sensei]

Meh. Not on the local news...

*Self-edit FWIW:

The story was on the evening news. I had checked NHK earlier on my lunch break, and it was regularly scheduled programming.

 

[James48843]

Rat at Fukushima Plant May Have Caused Blackout

Source: NYT

TOKYO – The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant said Wednesday that it had found what it believes was the cause of an extended blackout that disabled vital cooling systems earlier this week: the charred body of a rat.

The operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, said when its engineers looked inside a faulty switchboard, they found burn marks and the rodent’s scorched body. The company said it appeared that the rat had somehow short-circuited the switchboard, possibly by gnawing on cables.

The company, known as Tepco, has blamed problems with the switchboard for the power failure that began Monday, cutting off the flow of cooling water to four pools used to store more than 8,800 nuclear fuel rods. It took Tepco almost a day to restore cooling to the first of the affected pools, with cooling of the final pool resuming early Wednesday.

Tepco said it would have taken several days for temperatures in the pools to have risen above the safe level of 65 degrees Celsius, or 149 degrees Fahrenheit. Still, the blackout served as an uncomfortable reminder to many Japanese about the continuing vulnerability of the plant, which suffered a triple meltdown in March 2011 after a huge earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems. It was the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/world/asia/rat-at-fukushima-plant.html

 

[Sensei]

My Yomiuri Giants-Chunichi Dragons game was just interrupted by a news report that the cooling system is back up and running, and they've taken measures to keep out "small animals". :laugh:

Oops - back to the game. Former big-leaguer John Bowker just went oppo for a home run. Giants up 3-0.