Tokyo, April 15: Japan says given the slow progress of removing radioactive water from reactors at the quake-hit Fukushima Daiichi power plant, an alternative may be needed to avert the crisis.
“It may be difficult to completely remove the contaminated water and so allow work to proceed. We may need to think of other options,” Deputy Director-General of Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency Hidehiko Nishiyama said on Thursday.
“As there is believed to be around 20,000 tons of water (in the No. 2 reactor turbine building and the trench connected to it), we feel the difficulty of lowering the level of the water in a stable manner,” Kyodo News Agency quoted Nishiyama as saying.
Operator of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), began pumping 60,000 tons of highly radioactive water from the basements of the No. 1 to 3 reactor turbine buildings as well as trenches connected to them on Tuesday.
So far, 660 tons of water has been removed from one of the trenches to a “condenser” inside the nearby No. 2 reactor turbine building.
Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, however, announced on Thursday that the level of water has increased by about 3.5 centimeters from the level observed on Wednesday morning.
The level of the water is 2.5 centimeters lower than just before the water-removal operation started.
On Wednesday, TEPCO’s President Masataka Shimizu once again apologized for the nuclear crisis that hit the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
On Tuesday, Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency raised the severity level of the situation at Fukushima from 5 to 7, the worst on an international scale.
——–Agencies