Japan resumes cooling operations at quake-hit nuke plant
March 21st, 2011 - 1:22 pm ICT by ANITokyo, Mar.21 (ANI): In an effort to cool down reactors and overheating spent fuel pools, Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (SDF) and firefighting personnel resumed spraying water at the crisis hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Monday.
External cooling efforts at the plant’s No. 4 reactor began on Sunday and since Thursday fire-fighters and the SDF have dumped over 3700 tons of water on the stricken No. 3 reactor.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), owner and operator of the plant, said they had had been successful in supplying power in the No. 2 and No. 5 reactors and could now restore their systems to monitor radiation ans other relavant data which would help in cooling down the reactors anfd their spent fuel pools.
TEPCO said that at the time of the quake, reactors No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 at the Daiichi facility were the only ones operating and had automatically shutdown as they were supposed to, but due to the failure of the cooling systems, some of the cores are believed to have partially melted, Xinhua reports.
Japan is going through a major crisis after being hit by a magnitude 8.9 earthquake and tsunami last Friday, which damaged cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant causing explosions in some of the reactors and radiation leakage in and around the plant. (ANI)
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Tags: cooling systems, cores, earthquake, electric power co, explosions, fire fighters, firefighting, fuel pools, last friday, magnitude, nuclear power plant, quake, radiation, reactor, reactors, sdf, self defense, tepco, tokyo electric, xinhua