Tepco Said to Plan for Three Months of Cooling at Fukushima

[nadinbrzezinski]

Tokyo Electric Power Co. estimates the fight to stabilize its crippled Fukushima reactors will last through June, leaving them vulnerable to more aftershocks and radiation leaks, a person briefed on the utility’s plan said.

Engineers at Tokyo Electric rejected a proposal to flood reactors at the damaged plant, which could lower temperatures in days rather than months, according to the person, who asked not to be identified because he isn’t authorized to speak to the media. Instead, the utility is pumping in water and venting off steam, a method called “feed and bleed.”

Since the magnitude-9 quake and tsunami hit the Fukushima Dai-Ichi station on March 11, there have been hundreds of aftershocks, including one this week that disabled the plant’s power and cooling systems for almost an hour. As the crisis drags on, there’s the risk of new accidents, said Pierre Zaleski, a former member of the French Atomic Energy Commission.

“The major problem is these aftershocks,” said Zaleski, executive director at the Center for Geopolitics of Energy and Raw Materials at the University Paris Dauphine. “You never know if there are more aftershocks and containment may fail --maybe not completely -- but these structures have been weakened.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-14/tepco-said-to-estimate-three-months-needed-to-stabilize-fukushima-reactors.html