From the ‘Soothing Bromides Department’, the Japanese reactor operator TEPCO demonstrates press agentry and the balm of official pronouncements are substitutes for reality as it announces a ‘Nine Month Program’ to control radiation @ the Fukushima Daiichi reactor site:

TEPCO aims to achieve ‘cold shutdown’ for reactors in 6-9 months

(Kyodo News)

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Sunday that it aims to bring the damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to a stable condition known as a ”cold shutdown” in about six to nine months, while trying to achieve a ”steady reduction” in levels of radiation leaks in about three months.

As the plant continues to leak radioactivity into the air and sea more than a month after the earthquake and tsunami crippled its cooling systems, the company began using two remotely controlled U.S. robots the same day at one of the reactors to take various readings inside.

”We will do our utmost to curb the release of radioactive materials by achieving a stable cooling state at the reactors and spent fuel pools,” TEPCO Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata told a press conference at its headquarters in Tokyo in announcing the schedule for bringing the plant under control.

The utility also said it will work on restoring stable cooling to the reactors and spent fuel pools in about three months.

The problems are beyond the operator’s grasp: in order to cool fuel which now resides @ the bottoms of the pressure vessels or basements of the containments, hundreds of tons of water must be continually pumped into the reactors. This water leaks out of the containments and flows into the ocean carrying with it large amounts of radioactive elements.

The water flow provides the cooling (the ground under the reactors is the heat sink) but also is a barrier against workers attempting to fix leaks. As soon as water is pumped out of reactor basements, more water floods back. The earthquake and subsequent explosions made sieves of the reactor containments.

Water is a shield against particulate and gamma radiation. According the the TEPCO plan, the same or increasing amounts of water must flow through the plant for the next nine months until a ‘replacement’ cooling system is installed. As the water flows, the radiation accumulates.

Meanwhile, fires continue to break out and more leaks are discovered.

Levels of Radioactive Materials Rise Near Japanese Plant
(Associated Press – NY Times)

TOKYO (AP) — Levels of radioactive materials have risen sharply again in seawater near the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in northern Japan, raising the possibility of new leaks at the complex, the government said Saturday.

Workers have been struggling to deal with contaminated runoff at the plant that resulted from makeshift efforts to cool reactors and spent fuel rod pools after a huge earthquake and tsunami knocked out regular cooling systems.

Much of the tons of water that has been sprayed on the reactors and pools has been stored, but the company that operates the plant, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, recently discovered and eventually plugged a leak that could have been gushing for days. The levels of radioactive materials in the ocean near the plant dropped after that.

But the government said Saturday that levels of radioactive materials in the seawater have risen again in recent days. The level of radioactive iodine 131 jumped to 6,500 times the legal limit, according to samples taken Friday, up from 1,100 times the limit in samples taken the day before. Levels of cesium 134 and cesium 137 rose nearly fourfold. The increased levels are still far below those recorded earlier this month before the initial leak was plugged.

It’s a standoff: as long as TEPCO can continue to pump water through the plant, the reactors deterioration will be slow. Keep in mind that emissions of iodine 131 also indicate reactivity is taking place within the some or all of the fuel.

• TEPCO has been ‘editing’ reports on radionuclides detected @ the site and elsewhere.

• ‘Cold Shutdown’ presupposes a functioning cooling system. It does not mean that the reactor is in a state where it can be left on its own. It means the cooling system of the reactor can remove the heat generated by the cores at a level below what the plant produces while operating. It is to some degree an arbitrary state. 

• Cold shutdown means one thing for a fully functioning reactor with an intact core, intact cooling systems and intact spent fuel pools. It means something different when cores are molten ruins @ the bottom of reactor containment buildings, when cooling is earthquake/explosion shattered and spent fuel rods and pellets are scattered all over the campus among thousands of tons of intensely radioactive debris. 

• A functioning cooling system is not something jury- rigged out of fire hoses or plastic pipe. As water cycles through any system, radiation within components increases. At some point the cooling cannot be approached because it is too radioactive.

• Increased amounts of radioactive water will have to be released into the ocean because there is no place to store it. There is also no way to treat the amounts of water flowing through the plants: there is simply too much water and too much radiation. What this means is ‘low- level radioactive water’ will be pumped into the ocean, the radiation level of each batch much higher than the preceding batches. Again, water handling equipment will become accumulators for radioactive materials so that @ some point it will all become too radioactive to approach or make use of.

More to come …