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Breach suspected at troubled Japanese power plant
The possible breach in the plant's Unit 3 might be a crack or a hole in the stainless steel chamber of the reactor core or in the spent fuel pool that's lined with several feet of reinforced concrete. The temperature and pressure inside the core, which holds the fuel rods, remained stable and was far lower than what would further melt the core.Suspicions of a possible breach were raised when two workers suffered skin burns after wading into water 10,000 times more radioactive than levels normally found in water in or around a reactor, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said. Water with equally high radiation levels was found in the Unit 1 reactor building, Tokyo Electric officials said. Water was also discovered in Units 2 and 4, and the company said it suspects that, too, is radioactive. It was not clear whether the water in each unit came from the same source, officials said, but acknowledged the discovery would delay work inside the plant. A breach could mean a leak has been seeping for days, likely since the hydrogen explosion at Unit 3 on March 14. It's not clear if any of the contaminated water has run into the ground. Radiation readings for the air were not yet available for Friday, but detections in recent days have shown no significant spike. Posted by: Crerenter Unairong2430 2011-03-25 |
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