Filtering of Tainted Water Begins at Japanese Plant

The filtering equipment, hastily cobbled together by several foreign and Japanese companies, is urgently needed because the storage facilities at the power plant are flooded with tens of thousands of tons of radioactive water and are expected to overflow as soon as next week if nothing is done.

If that occurs, Tokyo Electric, known as Tepco, would be forced to dump thousands of tons of even more tainted water into the ocean, and would probably bring down even more criticism on the embattled company and the government, which has been attacked for its handling of the crisis.

Hoping to avoid releasing any more contaminated water, Tepco in late April set out an ambitious nine-month road map for stabilizing conditions at its nuclear reactors. The plan includes setting up a sprawling water treatment plant that is expected to cost about $663 million. Built under the supervision of Toshiba and Hitachi, the filtration system is meant to sift out oil, and then cesium and other radioactive elements, before desalinating the remaining water.

The system is expected to process about 1,200 tons of water a day, which will be stored in tanks, some of which are being brought to the compound. Some of the filtered water will be reused to cool the reactors, reducing the need for fresh supplies. Tepco plans to filter water for about a year, said Junichi Matsumoto, a spokesman.

Tepco originally planned to begin operating the filtration system in July, but it sped up construction because contaminated water had been produced faster than expected at the nuclear plant. A leaky valve halted testing of the system on Thursday, and there were several more delays on Friday, before it finally got running. Tepco acknowledged that the system could falter again and might have to be shut down for repairs.

While the filtration system was being built, Tepco reduced the amount of water it was pouring into the plant’s stricken reactors to avoid filling up its storage facilities.

The beginning of the rainy season this month has complicated efforts to slow the creation of toxic water.

“It is something like a chemical plant constructed in a rush, so we have to go by trial and error,” said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director general of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, referring to the repeated problems that have plagued the project. “We have had to do this in a hurry, so conditions have been very severe.”

In all, about 500 tons of water is newly contaminated at the plant each day, adding to the 105,000 tons of highly radioactive water that is already stored on the site, mostly in the trenches and basements of the turbine and reactor buildings. Many of these areas are perilously near full to the brim. In the trenches at the No. 3 reactor, for example, there was just seven inches to spare on Friday.

Critics contend that while the filtration system will delay the runoff of radioactive water for a while, Tepco will continue to face water disposal problems because it may take years to fully cool the reactors at the plant.

“It’s just a matter of time before it overflows,” said Satoshi Sato, a nuclear engineer who formerly worked for General Electric at the reactors in Fukushima. “It’s an endless game.”

The water stored at the plant is contaminated with cesium 134, cesium 137 and iodine 131 with a total radioactivity estimated at 720,000 terabecquerels, more than the amount of radioactive material that has been spewed into the air at the plant so far.

The new filtration system still faces many hurdles. The companies operating it, including Areva from France and Kurion from the United States, have little experience working with seawater. And Tepco must still dispose of the radioactive material that is being sifted out of the wastewater; it is mixed with a chemical agent to create a toxic sludge.

During the summer, Tepco will deliver 370 tanks to the Daiichi plant to store an extra 40,400 tons of radioactive water. A megafloat that can store yet more water is moored near the plant.

The contaminated water has been an unavoidable side effect of Tepco’s “feed and bleed” strategy for dealing with the four destroyed reactors at Fukushima Daiichi. To cool them for eventual dismantling, the company is pouring huge volumes of freshwater and seawater directly onto the highly radioactive reactors, which contaminates the water, creating an environmental headache.

The devilish consequences of the company’s efforts became clear in April, when rivers of contaminated water seeped through cracks in drainage pits and flowed directly into the Pacific Ocean. While that leak was plugged, a lack of storage for contaminated water soon forced Tepco to deliberately release an additional 11,500 tons into the sea.

The dumping led to an international outcry. In waters near the plant, a variety of fish and seaweed were found with higher than normal levels of radioactivity, prompting a ban on the sale of marine products harvested from parts of Japan’s Pacific coast.

Several workers at the plant have suffered burns on their feet and ankles after stepping in highly radioactive water. Reducing the amount of water in and around the power plant will make it easier for workers to undertake other repairs.

Yasuko Kamiizumi and Kantaro Suzuki contributed reporting.

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NATO Begins Helicopter Attacks in Hopes of Ending the Stalemate With Qaddafi

 

Two American-built Apache helicopters operating from a British helicopter-carrier ship plying the Mediterranean 20 miles off the Libyan coast attacked targets before dawn near the oil city of Brega. British reporters aboard the Royal Navy ship Ocean said that both helicopters returned safely after missions lasting less than two hours. Defense officials in Paris said that French helicopters flying from the helicopter carrier Tonnerre also joined in the Brega strikes.

NATO said in a statement that the British helicopters had successfully attacked “military vehicles, military equipment and fielded forces.”

NATO officials have said that they regard the introduction of attack helicopters — the British Apaches and two French helicopter types, the Tigre and the Gazelle — as potential game changers in a conflict that has shown signs of settling into a stalemate. They say the helicopters’ advantage over airstrikes conducted from fast jets flying as high as 20,000 feet is their enhanced ability to carry out precision strikes against Qaddafi forces operating in urban areas, and to pinpoint targets like snipers or small groups of loyalist fighters hiding among civilians or close to schools and hospitals.

But the helicopters also introduce a new level of vulnerability for NATO pilots. Libya still has some scattered air defenses, consisting mainly of portable antiaircraft missiles and truck-mounted systems, which could pose dangers to relatively slow, low-flying helicopters.

The helicopter attacks were begun a week after Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France approved the deployment of attack helicopters from each of their forces, describing the move as intended to increase the military pressure on Colonel Qaddafi. NATO leaders, including President Obama, have called on the Libyan leader to abandon power and leave Libya, demands that he has repeatedly rejected.

Previously, all of 3,640 strike sorties flown during the 11-week air campaign had been by fixed-wing attack jets or missile-carrying Predator drones, following up on an initial barrage by cruise missiles.

The British version of the Apache flies at a maximum speed of about 160 miles an hour, compared with the potentially supersonic Tornado, Typhoon and Rafale jets that have conducted most of the British and French attacks in the air campaign.

The commander of the British helicopter carrier told reporters aboard the ship that the targets struck early on Saturday included a radar site and an “armed checkpoint” near Brega, a Qaddafi-held port in eastern Libya that has been a major export point and servicing center for Libya’s oil industry. French officials said that French helicopters attacked a military camp, apparently one that a NATO statement described as comprising 14 military vehicles, as well as “two shelters and 12 tents.”

With the costs of the air campaign mounting, and the stresses growing on air crews, finding a way of breaking the stalemate has become a priority for NATO, and particularly for Britain and France, which are carrying the brunt of the campaign.

Mr. Obama has let NATO allies take the lead in the Libyan operations, an unusual role for them in the history of such operations. The United States’ role has been confined primarily to air refueling, airborne command and control, surveillance and the deployment of missile-carrying drones.

Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard, the Canadian commander who oversees the air campaign from a base in Naples, Italy, issued a statement on Saturday calling the helicopters’ first missions successful and adding: “We will continue to use these assets whenever and wherever needed.”

Within hours of the Brega attacks, Britain’s Foreign Office announced that Foreign Secretary William Hague had arrived in the rebel capital, Benghazi, for talks with rebel leaders. The London statement said that Mr. Hague’s trip was “meant to show support for citizens fighting the rule” of Colonel Qaddafi.

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Water Pumping Begins at Japan Nuclear Reactor

 

The Japanese government, meanwhile, said it was considering a plan to further restrict access to the evacuated area within 12 miles of the plant, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. Some families have been re-entering the area to remove belongings, and dozens of people have never left.

At the plant itself, the Tokyo Electric Power Company said that it planned to pump 10,000 metric tons of water into a storage building at a rate of 480 tons a day, which would take nearly three weeks. The company is still working on ways to remove an additional 57,500 tons of heavily contaminated water at the same building, next to Reactor No. 2, and at other nearby buildings.

The cautious pace of the pumping and the volume of water to be moved are further signs of the complexity of the undertaking that faces Tokyo Electric. Removing the water is one of the 63 tasks that the company outlined Sunday in its plan to fully shut down the stricken reactors, halt all releases of radioactive material and restore reliable cooling and electricity roughly by the end of the year.

Michael Friedlander, a former senior nuclear power plant operator in the United States, said that while the pumping might be proceeding slowly, a faster pace could prove dangerous.

“If a pipe breaks and you’re pumping hundreds of gallons a minute, you’re going to make a huge mess,” he said.

Hidehiko Nishiyama, the deputy director general of Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said that the heavily contaminated water that had accumulated in basements and trenches at the site is two million times as radioactive as the less contaminated water that workers pumped into the ocean from April 4 to April 10. Workers pumped 10,393 tons of the less contaminated water into the ocean in order to make room in storage areas for the far more highly radioactive water from inside the reactor buildings.

Pumping contaminated water into the ocean has provoked considerable dismay from Japanese fishermen and from nearby countries, particularly South Korea and China. Mr. Nishiyama said Tuesday that Japan had no plans and no need to do so anymore.

Plans are being made for the installation of water-purification equipment and heat exchangers so that the same water can be pumped repeatedly through the reactors.

Anne Lauvergeon, the chief executive of Areva, France’s nuclear-power equipment provider, said at a news conference in Tokyo on Tuesday evening that it would probably take until the end of May to set up a water treatment station at the plant. Once running, she said, it should be able to handle 50 metric tons of water an hour and should almost entirely remove the radiation.

The technology, called “co-precipitation,” uses chemical agents to remove radioactive elements from water. The treatment station itself will be provided by Veolia Water, a British water and waste management service. Areva and Tokyo Electric have not discussed the cost of the services, Ms. Lauvergeon said.

Areva, together with Veolia Water, will also provide three lines of desalination equipment to enable Tokyo Electric to convert seawater into fresh water for cooling the reactors. Fresh water provides better cooling; the spaces between the fuel rods have started to become congested with salt from seawater.

She also said that Areva was not preparing an overall plan to decommission the troubled plant, though she said the company was prepared to cooperate with any long-term process to eventually dismantle Fukushima Daiichi. Toshiba and Hitachi have submitted competing plans to dismantle the plant; the work could take decades.

In a further effort to improve cooling, Mr. Nishiyama said Tuesday that a decision had been made to flood the primary containment vessels of the No. 1 and No. 3 reactors with enough water to cover up the sides of the reactor pressure vessels up to the level of the uranium fuel rods.

This was not done sooner because only now have workers been able to determine that the primary containment vessels are sufficiently watertight. The vessel at the No. 2 reactor is damaged and leaking gases, and the leak or leaks need to be plugged before it can be flooded, Mr. Nishiyama said.

The No. 2 reactor has posed some of the greatest challenges in recent days, including another leak that spewed radioactive water until plugged two weeks ago.

Robots entered Reactors Nos. 1 and 3 on Sunday and measured the radiation inside. But when two robots entered Reactor No. 2 on Monday, the steam inside was so dense that a robot mounted with a camera was unable to get a clear image of a radiation sensor carried by the other robot, Japanese officials said.

Ken Ijichi, Moshe Komata and Kantaro Suzuki contributed reporting.