Workers in radiation protection suits exchange instructions before they start radiation screening in Fukushima prefecture. -- PHOTO: AFP
FUKUSHIMA (Japan) - OFFICIALS are racing to restore electricity to Japan's leaking nuclear plant, but getting the power flowing will hardly be the end of their battle: With its mangled machinery and partly melted reactor cores, bringing the complex under control is a monstrous job.
Restoring the power to all six units at the tsunami-damaged complex is key, because it will, in theory, drive the maze of motors, valves and switches that help deliver cooling water to the overheated reactor cores and spent fuel pools that are leaking radiation.
Ideally, officials believe it should only take a day to get the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear under control once the cooling systems are up and running. But it could take days or weeks to get those systems working.
'We have experienced a very huge disaster that has caused very large damage at a nuclear power generation plant on a scale that we had not expected,' Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director general of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, told reporters late on Monday.
The nuclear plant's cooling systems were wrecked by the massive earthquake and tsunami that devastated north-eastern Japan on March 11. Since then, conditions at the plant have been volatile; plumes of smoke rose from two reactor units on Monday, prompting workers to evacuate units 1-4.
The crews resumed the work early on Tuesday, plant spokesman Motoyasu Tamaki said. In another setback, the plant's operator said on Monday it had just discovered that some of the cooling system's key pumps at the complex's troubled Unit 2 are no longer functional - meaning replacements have to be brought in. -- AP
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