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Workers miss deadline to reconnect power at nuclear plant

Bloomberg - March 19, 2011

Yuji Okada & Sachiko Sakamaki, Tokyo – Engineers missed a deadline to restore power to the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi atomic plant, prolonging efforts to prevent more radiation leaks as Japan's government told people nearby to cover up and avoid the rain.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. pushed back its target to reconnect a power cable to the No. 2 reactor to later today after working through the night. Tepco said today it restarted the cooling pump at the plant's No. 5 reactor, which was undergoing maintenance at the time of the March 11 earthquake and was one of the least damaged.

Troops and firefighters are spraying seawater on reactor No. 1, 2, 3 and 4, which suffered more damage and may pose a greater risk of radiation leaks, in an attempt to prevent fuel rods from overheating. Weather forecasts indicated changing winds could start moving radiation closer to Tokyo this weekend.

"The power-line connection to the No. 2 unit didn't go smoothly," Hikaru Kuroda, chief of Tepco's nuclear facility management department, told a briefing in Tokyo today. "The work was done at night, and it took longer than we expected. We are trying to complete the connection by the end of today."

People living within 30 kilometers of the Fukushima plant along the northeastern coast should wear masks and long sleeves and stay out of the rain, Japan's nuclear safety agency said.

Power may be restored to all six reactors by tomorrow, Kuroda said. Reconnecting the No. 2 unit also will restore power to reactor No. 1, while the rest may be connected by tomorrow, Kuroda said.

"It's really a question of how many of the pumping systems they can start up," said George Dracoulis, a professor in the Australian National University's nuclear physics department. "It's still not clear whether all of them can be restarted because they may be damaged."

There's a "possibility" that water pumps damaged by the earthquake and tsunami may not work once power is restored and the situation "does not allow optimism," Kuroda said yesterday. The magnitude-9 earthquake was Japan's strongest on record.

Efforts to control the crisis at the plant were delayed by concerns over damaging valuable assets and initial passivity from the Japanese government, the Wall Street Journal reported today, citing people familiar with the matter.

Tepco was reluctant to use seawater to cool the No. 1 reactor because it was concerned about harming its long-term investment, the Journal reported. The utility didn't use seawater until the evening of March 12 after being ordered to do so by Prime Minister Naoto Kan, the Journal said.

Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said he's aware of the criticism of Tepco and people are "doing their best." There are improvements in the nuclear crisis, he told a briefing in Tokyo today.

By tomorrow, the weather may take emissions toward the capital, 220 kilometers south of the station, Austria's meteorological center said, using data from the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty Organization. At current levels, the radiation isn't dangerous beyond the immediate vicinity of the plant, the center said.

"The situation at the power plant is still unpredictable," Kan, who described the crisis as "very grave," said in Tokyo yesterday. "But we're making our utmost effort to control it, and we'll surely overcome this crisis."

Japan faces a "battle with time," International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Yukiya Amano said after meeting ministers in Tokyo. The earthquake and tsunami knocked out Fukushima Dai-Ichi's backup generators, pitching workers into a battle to keep the plant cool and stem radiation from the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl 25 years ago.

A backup generator at the No. 6 reactor was fixed, Tepco said in a press release today. The utility also vented hydrogen gas at reactor Nos. 5 and 6 to prevent a buildup of pressure, Tepco spokesman Kaoru Yoshida said. Such buildups caused explosions at units 1, 2 and 3.

Japanese soldiers used fire engines yesterday to dump seawater on reactor No. 3, site of an explosion earlier this week. The dousing was stopped in the afternoon as the effort replenished some water to the spent-fuel pools at the reactor, Air Self Defense Force Chief of Staff Shigeru Iwasaki said.

"On Sunday, a frontal system is crossing the region with heavy rain," Austria's Meteorological and Geophysics Center said in a statement. "Behind the front, northerly winds are predicted, increasing the risk for the region around Tokyo."

Radiation has been detected in eastern Russia at levels that pose no risk to human health, said the center, set up in 1996 to detect nuclear-test explosions. A "minuscule" amount of radiation that probably came from the damaged Japanese reactors was picked up at a California monitoring station yesterday, the US government said.

Images posted on the Austrian center's Web site show intense radionuclide concentrations around the reactors. Wind currents take the plume in a winding pattern over the Pacific Ocean, setting the particles adrift in north- and south-easterly patterns.

"I can't see members of the general public exposed to dangerous levels of radiation," Don Higson, a fellow at the Australasian Radiation Protection Society and former adviser to the International Atomic Energy Agency, said by phone today.

The failure of backup generators used to pump cooling water helped cause explosions in at least three of the buildings surrounding Fukushima's six reactors. A fire also started in a pond containing spent fuel rods from reactor No. 4.

Kan said the government is being as transparent as possible about the crisis, rebutting criticism by the IAEA's Amano that it held back information.

"Everything has been disclosed to the Japanese public," Kan said. "We have shared what we know with the international community." Japan upgraded its warning for some parts of the plant from a four to a five on an international scale of seven, the IAEA said yesterday. The five rating is for accidents with wider consequences. The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 rated seven.

Tepco, Asia's biggest utility, acknowledged its No. 1, 2 and 3 reactors at the site had been changed to a level five rating, according to a statement on the company's Web site.

The greatest risks at Fukushima may come from the spent fuel pools sitting atop the six reactors.

The nuclear agency said March 17 there is a possibility of no water at the No. 4 reactor's spent-fuel cooling pool. If exposed to air, the fuel rods could decay, catch fire and spew radioactive materials into the air.

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