Technicians have restored power to all cooling systems at the reactors of Japan’s tsunami-hit Fukushima nuclear plant, the operating company said today after a blackout sparked a new crisis.
Equipment in pools used to cool used fuel became fully operational from 1512 GMT, some 30 hours after the blackout, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) said.
Used nuclear fuel becomes dangerous if its temperature is allowed to rise uncontrollably to the point where a self-sustaining critical reaction begins, causing a meltdown.
“We have deeply worried the public, but the system has been restored and we have been able to stably cool” the pools, Masayuki Ono, TEPCO spokesman, told a press conference.
The utility was yet to find out what caused the power outage, but suspected a problem with a switchboard.
“It will require some time because of the detailed analysis required,” Ono added.
The incident was a reminder of the vulnerable state of the Fukushima plant two years after the tsunami, despite the Government’s claim that the reactors are in a “cold shutdown” state and no longer releasing high levels of radiation.
The latest crisis began Monday night with a brief power outage at a building on the plant’s site that serves as the central command for work to contain nuclear accidents and to dismantle the reactors.
The initial glitch cut electricity to the cooling pools at three of four heavily damaged reactors as well as a common pool at 1000 GMT on Monday, according to TEPCO.
By yesterday evening engineers had managed to restart cooling systems in the three affected reactor pools, TEPCO said.
A separate cooling system for the common pool was restarted just after midnight today, ending the latest problem, the company said.
TEPCO has stressed that the glitch was fixed before any lasting damage was caused, saying the temperatures of all the fuel pools remained well below the safety limit of 65 degrees Celsius.
The firm added that it was building a backup power supply to the pools. Company officials say there has been no major change to the level of radioactivity at nearby monitoring spots.
Monday’s outage knocked out power to nine facilities at the plant, its largest simultaneous electricity failure since it was brought under control in December 2011.
The firm says the incident did not affect the injection of cooling water into reactors whose cores melted down soon after the start of the 2011 nuclear crisis.