In the first high-level visit to the crippled plant in Fukushima prefecture, Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Banri Kaieda met workers trying to stabilise the facility, which was damaged by the March 11 magnitude-9 quake and tsunami that left nearly 30,000 people dead or unaccounted for.
The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), also continued to pump nitrogen, an inert gas, into the No 1 reactor to prevent more hydrogen blasts at the facility, which was rocked by two such radiation-leaking explosions last month. Its engineers launched the task of building a 120-metre wide wall of steel sheets to form a “silt curtain” for the radioactive material.
The workers also stepped up efforts to remove highly radioactive water from a tunnel of reactor No 2, as they tried to cool their cores and plug leaks.
TEPCO said contaminated water in a concrete tunnel of the No 2 reactor has risen 10 cm since leakage of the water into the ocean stopped on Wednesday, national broadcaster NHK reported.
Along with efforts to stop the leakage, the utility also released about 9,000 tonnes of water containing relatively low-level radioactive materials into the sea to free up room to pool more contaminated water that has flooded the No 2 reactor’s turbine building and a tunnel outside it.
TEPCO said it will fly a small unmanned helicopter to survey the plant, possibly from Sunday, depending on the weather. The drone is expected to capture images of damaged installations at the Numbers 1 to 4 reactors.
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