Tepco Starts Circulating Cooling System for No. 3 Fuel Pool

Tokyo Electric Power Co. started a system for circulating water to cool spent nuclear fuel stored in a pool at the No. 3 reactor of its crippled Fukushima Dai- Ichi station yesterday.

A test run of the cooling system started yesterday, Takehiro Todoroki, a spokesman at the utility known as Tepco said by telephone today. The company plans to start similar systems for circulating water in the spent fuel pools at the No. 1 and No. 4 reactors this month, he said.

The March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out power lines and backup generators leading to the failure of cooling systems at the station, triggering the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 25 years. The Tokyo-based utility has been pouring water on reactors and spent fuel rods to keep them cool.

The temperature in the spent fuel pool of the No. 2 reactor fell to 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) from 70 degrees Celsius three days after starting a similar cooling system on May 31, according to Tepco.

To contact the reporters on this story: Tsuyoshi Inajima in Tokyo at tinajima@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Amit Prakash in Singapore at aprakash1@bloomberg.net