Tepco has been ignoring the risk of frozen pipes

Following up this article ..Cold weather destroys water cooling system

Tepco admitted that their employees suggested covering the pipes or to set heaters near them so as to not let the pipes get frozen but they kept ignoring it since last summer.

An employee sighs “The pipes are exposed to the outside. It was predicted that the pipes would get frozen and cause water leakage. What are they doing..”

As the result of doing nothing for several months, at least 23 points were found leaking water by 1/30/2012. They found 14 points leaking water by 1/29/2012 but they found additional 4 points to leak around the facility to concentrate the contaminated water by evaporating.

Tepco had been ignoring the risk because “it was hard to keep man power”, but now all they could do is to make the patrol more frequently. It requires more man power.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency asserts it is Tepco’s fault, but, there is no document to prove they warned and ordered Tepco by 1/29/2012, when they found 20 points to leak.

Now the pipe is outside, runs for longer than 10km, water leakage will happen everyday.
They just can wrap the pipes with lagging material, but still parts to stick out can not be wrapped and end up causing water leakage. They need to put heaters and surround it with temporary walls.

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About this site

This website updates the latest news about the Fukushima nuclear plant and also archives the past news from 2011. Because it's always updated and added live, articles, categories and the tags are not necessarily fitted in the latest format.
I am the writer of this website. About page remains in 2014. This is because my memory about 311 was clearer than now, 2023, and I think it can have a historical value. Now I'm living in Romania with 3 cats as an independent data scientist.
Actually, nothing has progressed in the plant since 2011. We still don't even know what is going on inside. They must keep cooling the crippled reactors by water, but additionally groundwater keeps flowing into the reactor buildings from the broken parts. This is why highly contaminated water is always produced more than it can circulate. Tepco is planning to officially discharge this water to the Pacific but Tritium is still remaining in it. They dilute this with seawater so that it is legally safe, but scientifically the same amount of radioactive tritium is contained. They say it is safe to discharge, but none of them have drunk it.

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