Japan prime minister says Fukushima reactors are now constant

December 17, 2011 01:23
Japan prime minister says Fukushima reactors are now constant

On Friday Japan's prime minister Yoshihiko Noda said that, the Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima which was destroyed by tsunami has now come to the state of cold shutdown.And there is no continued leaking abundant amounts of radiation.

As prime minister says that the tsunami which took place on March 11 has sent three reactors at the plant into meltdowns in the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.

But experts observed that the plant remains exposed to more problems and it will take decades to shut down.

"The reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have reached a state of cold shutdown," Yoshihiko Noda told a Cabinet meeting.

The government's official endorsement of the claim by Tokyo Electric Power Co. that the reactors have reached cold shutdown status is a necessary step toward revising evacuation zones around the plant and focusing efforts from simply stabilizing the facility to actually starting the arduous process of shutting it down.

The government says Fukushima Daiichi has reached cold shutdown "conditions"- a cautious phrasing reflecting the fact that TEPCO cannot measure temperatures of melted fuel in the damaged reactors in the same way as with normally functioning ones.

Even so, the announcement marks the end of the second phase of the government's lengthy roadmap to completely decommission the plant, which is expected to take 30 years or more.

Officials can now start discussing whether to allow some evacuated residents who lived in areas with lesser damage from the plant to return home - although a 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone around the plant is expected to remain off limits for years to come. The crisis displaced some 100,000 people.

A cold shutdown normally means a nuclear reactor's coolant system is at atmospheric pressure and the its reactor core is at a temperature below 212 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees Celsius), making it impossible for a chain reaction to take place.

As per the TEPCO, Inside the Fukushima reactors the temperature gauges show the pressure vessel is at around 70 C .As the government says that the amount of which radiation is being coming out from the plant is at or below 1 millisievert per year which is same to the annual legal exposure limit for ordinary citizens before the crisis began.

If you enjoyed this Post, Sign up for Newsletter

(And get daily dose of political, entertainment news straight to your inbox)

Rate This Article
(0 votes)