Out
of control: Fukushima manager admits to ‘embarrassing failure’
The
manager of the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant has admitted
not having full control of the facility. Contrary to the statements
of the Japanese PM, TEPCO’s Akira Ono said attempts to plug the
leaks of radioactive water had failed.
19
April 2014
"It's
embarrassing to admit, but there are certain parts of the site where
we don't have full control," Ono told reporters touring the
plant this week, reported Reuters. Last year, the Japanese PM
attempted to assure the world that the situation at the stricken
nuclear power plant was under control.
However,
over the last couple of months the clean-up procedure at the plant
has been fraught with difficulties.
Tokyo
Electric Power Co (TEPCO), the plant’s operator, has consistently
faced contaminated water leaks at the Fukushima plant.
Water
has to be pumped over the facilities stricken reactors in order to
keep them from overheating, but this process creates large quantities
of contaminated water which has to be stored in tanks on the site.
Ono
acknowledged to press that in TEPCO’s rush to deal with the
stricken facility following the earthquake-triggered tsunami in 2011,
the company may have made mistakes.
“It
may sound odd, but this is the bill we have to pay for what we have
done in the past three years,” he said. “But we were pressed to
build tanks in a rush and may have not paid enough attention to
quality. We need to improve quality from here.”
TEPCO
will have to improve the quality of the tanks so the plant can
survive the next 30-40 years of the decommissioning process, Ono went
on to say.
The
plant’s manager said that the number one aim was to keep the
radioactive water from getting into the ocean.
“The
ultimate purpose is to prevent contaminated water from going out to
the ocean, and in this regard, I believe it is under control,” Ono
said. But a series of leaks have obliged officials to “find better
ways to handle the water problem.”
In
the latest blunder at the plant, TEPCO mistakenly flooded the
Fukushima facility’s basements with radioactive cooling-tank water.
Earlier this week the Japanese newspaper the Asahi Shimbun reported
that around 200 tons of water had found its way into waste disposal
facilities under the power plant. TEPCO said they were working to fix
the leakage as soon as possible.
Cleaning
up Fukushima is becoming an increasing headache for the Japanese
authorities. Experts predict that fully decommissioning the stricken
plant is a process that could take decades, costing the country
billions of dollars.
Following
the multiple meltdown of the Fukushima plant in 2011 that was
triggered by a tsunami, the Japanese government pledged to abandon
nuclear power by 2010. However, in spite of public outrage,
Fukushima
Mistakes Increasing Exponentially Update 4/17/14
"Don't
Eat the Fish" Warns LA News Outlet~ Fukushima Radiation Update
4/17/14
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