Tepco uses steel wall to contain radioactive water

[jpak]

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/tepco-uses-steel-wall-to-contain-radioactive-water-2011-04-09

Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear power station, began on Saturday to install a steel wall and fence to prevent more radioactive contaminated water from flowing into the Pacific Ocean, according to media reports.

The company (TKECY 6.45, +1.10, +20.56%) (JP:9501 420.00, +80.00, +23.53%) plans to plug a seawater intake connected to the No. 2 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi complex with seven steel sheets and a 120-meter-wide curtain-like fence near the intake and two other locations nearby, according to Japan’s Kyodo news, which added that radioactive iodine reading was 63,000 times the legal limit in seawater near the intake a day after contaminated water stopped leaking into the sea.

As Japan’s neighboring countries China and Korea expressed worries about the discharge of contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi plant, an executive at Tepco apologized for spreading radiation into the air and sea as regulators said the pumping of radioactive water into waters off Japan would stop on Sunday, one day later than planned, Reuters reported.

Meanwhile, as radiation fears spread, the Japanese government banned the cultivation of rice in contaminated soil, after vegetables and milk were the first foods that raised concerns about the safety of Japanese agriculture following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that flooded the nuclear plant, cutting power to the primary and secondary systems cooling the reactors.

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[kristopher]

1. I don't get the gist of what they are doing.

I haven't had a chance to watch NHK today, maybe it will be on later.