Radioactive Gas Released From Nuclear Plant Damaged by Japan's EarthQuake
March 11 (Bloomberg) -- Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, U.S. President Barack Obama and Nouriel Roubini, founder of Roubini Global Economics, speak about the 8.9-magnitude earthquake that struck Japan and unleashed a seven-meter-high tsunami that killed hundreds of people as it engulfed towns on the northern coast. This report also contains comments from Francisco Blanch, global head of commodities research at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch; Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James & Associates Inc., and Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. (Source: Bloomberg)
Tokyo Electric Power Co. started releasing radioactive gas from one of the reactors at a nuclear plant north of Tokyo and is preparing to conduct a similar operation at a second station after yesterday’s quake.
Tokyo Electric, Asia’s biggest power company, started venting gas from a containment section of the No. 1 reactor of its Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant north of Tokyo at about 9 a.m. local time, Akitsuka Kobayashi, a company spokesman, said by phone today.
Japan’s government ordered the utility to begin releasing gas to reduce a rise in pressure in the reactor containment housing. Radiation spread by the release won’t be at a level dangerous to health, said Ryohei Shiomi, a spokesman at the government’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. The company is preparing to release gas at the Dai-Ni nuclear plant nearby, a spokesman said.
“You don’t want to have that containment pressurized. When the pressure starts building up, the emergency procedure is to start venting,” Dave Lochbaum, director of the nuclear safety project at the Union for Concerned Scientists, said in a telephone interview. “They’ve essentially entered a beat the clock game. As long as there is no fuel damage, there will be radioactivity, but it will be very low.”
The government widened the evacuation zone around the reactor to 10 kilometers (6 miles) from 3 kilometers. Residents near another reactor at the plant were also told to evacuate.
Pressure Builds
Tokyo Electric earlier said it had lost control of pressure building up in three reactors at the power plant in Fukushima prefecture after the 8.9-magnitude earthquake struck yesterday. Temperatures in the control room rose to higher than 100 Celsius (212 Fahrenheit), said Naoki Tsunoda, a company spokesman.
The plant’s operators need to connect to the electricity grid, fix emergency diesel generators or bring in more batteries to power a backup system that pumps the water needed to cool the reactor, said Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer who has worked at nuclear power plants for 17 years.
The air cooling system in the containment building probably failed due to the power loss, allowing pressure to increase inside, Lochbaum said.
The main barrier between a reactor and outside areas is the containment building, Lochbaum said. Without an air cooling system the air heats, causing pressure to rise inside the building, which the risk that radioactive air will escape.
Tokyo Electric has also started preparing to vent gas from the containment areas of four reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ni nuclear plant, spokesman Naoyuki Matsumoto said.
To contact the reporters on this story: Michio Nakayama in Tokyo at mnakayama4@bloomberg.net; Yuji Okada in Tokyo at yokada6@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jim McDonald at jmcdonald8@bloomberg.net
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