Tokyo, April 04: It could take several more months to bring Japan’s tsunami-ravaged nuclear plant under control, a safety agency spokesman said on Sunday as engineers tried to find a way to stop highly radioactive water from pouring into the Pacific.
Nuclear safety agency spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama on Sunday offered the first sense of how long it might take to bring an end to the nuclear crisis. “It would take a few months until we finally get things under control and have a better idea about the future,” Nishiyama said. “We’ll face a crucial turning point within the next few months, but that is not the end.”
Bringing the reactors under control will require permanently restoring cooling systems knocked out by the tsunami that prevent reactors from dangerously overheating . The task has been complicated by dangerous conditions at the plant that have often forced workers to stop what they are doing.
Some new problem crops up at the complex nearly every day. Workers discovered an 20cm crack in a maintenance pit Saturday and said they believe water from it may be the source of some of the high levels of radioactive iodine that have been found in the ocean for more than a week.
They have had trouble telling where the water is coming from, and this is the first time they have found it leaking directly into the sea. A picture released by plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co shows water shooting some distance away from a wall and splashing into the ocean, though the amount is not clear. The contaminated water dissipates quickly in the ocean but could pose a danger to workers at the plant.
Engineers tried to seal the crack with concrete on Saturday , but that didn’t work. So on Sunday they injected a mix of sawdust, shredded newspaper and a polymer that can expand to 50 times its normal size when combined with water . The polymer mix had not yet stopped the leak on Sunday night but engineers have not given up hope and should know by Monday morning whether it will work.
-Agencies