A unit recently installed at Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant to reduce radiation levels in contaminated water is falling short of expectations, the plant's operator said.
A unit recently installed at Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant to reduce radiation levels in contaminated water is falling short of expectations, the plant's operator said.
Radiation levels in water treated by the water purification system in trial runs were about 1/20,000th of original levels, falling far short of its touted capacity of up to 1/1,000,000th of original levels, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said June 22.
The finding will force the utility to further delay a full start of the system, which has already been plagued by a series of malfunctions.
"We were expecting to move to a full start in a few days, but we cannot tell at this stage when we can put the system to operation," Junichi Matsumoto, a senior official at the utility's nuclear power section, said.
The utility based its plan for treating contaminated water on the assumption that the system was capable of reducing radiation levels in contaminated water at the entire compound to levels ranging from 1/10,000th to 1/1,000,000th.
The less than expected performance was partially attributable to a device that adsorbs radioactive cesium manufactured by Kurion Inc., a U.S. firm.
The device was supposed to reduce radioactivity to 1/1,000th of original levels, but it actually only cut it to 1/50th.
The water purification system was built by Toshiba Corp., Areva SA, a leading French nuclear engineering company, Kurion and other companies.