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Japan unlikely to build new nuclear plants after crisis, Kan tells FT

TOKYO, May 25, Kyodo

The nuclear crisis triggered by the massive earthquake and tsunami has made it difficult for Japan to build new atomic power plants, Prime Minister Naoto Kan suggested in an interview with the Financial Times citing the experience of the United States after the 1979 Three Mile Island accident.

Kan was quoted Tuesday by a Japanese government official as telling the British newspaper that Japan will depend less on nuclear energy and focus more on natural energy and energy-saving efforts in light of the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi complex.

Kan mentioned the aftermath of the Three Mile Island case, which has seen the United States build no new nuclear power plants since then. english.kyodonews.jp

"The situation is believed to have caused the fuel rods to melt, creating holes in the pressure vessel, and damaging the containment vessel."

TEPCO still looking into emergency cooling system

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is still unable to determine how long an emergency cooling system at the Number 1 reactor remained off after the March 11 earthquake.

Officials of Tokyo Electric Power Company spoke to reporters on Tuesday about the system, which can function without external sources of power.

Operating records at the plant show that the system turned on automatically 6 minutes after the earthquake, at 2:52 PM, and halted 11 minutes later, at 3:03 PM. The system was back on more than 3 hours later, at 6:18 PM.

TEPCO says that based on hearing from workers, it has confirmed that the system was manually shut down at 3:03 PM.
It said this step was made based on a manual, in order to prevent damage to the reactor, because the temperature of the water to cool the No.1 reactor had dropped sharply.

TEPCO says the system may have been turned on in the 3 hours until 6:18, but that it cannot clearly determine the course of events based on studies of circuits and interviews with workers.

The utility firm says at this point it cannot determine to what extent the emergency system was functioning, and that it will continue investigating.

The firm also said that data taken in the 30 minutes after the earthquake show no irregularities in all safety features of the Number 1 to 3 reactors such as emergency power sources and in major facilities of the plant.

On May 16th, TEPCO disclosed the plant's operating records from immediately after the earthquake. The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has instructed the firm to submit a report after analyzing them further and assessing their effects on nuclear safety.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011 14:00 +0900 (JST)
www3.nhk.or.jp

@dean : hihi. does anyone know how to convert csv / xml files into a diagran/graph/plot ? maybe a freeware tool ? or do i have to write one ?

Helicopter above Daiichi

@Nancy : exactly that was my intention, the tepco files. i think i will have to script a program for that. but that lot of work.

@wtm do you have a news link for that 1500 dead in Oklahoma news story?

@Edano There is someone rob found who has spreadsheets that auto update - we might be able to use those and google gaddgets

@Edano - I think this is the person with the auto updating spreadsheets www.sendung.de

I think TEPCO has an RSS feed Rob might have the link

@Edano I will see if I can get the TEPCO feed from Rob. This is the gauge visualization gadget they want to use for TEPCo data on the website

the cesium isotopes above the reactors (which have no fuel anymore and are in "cold shutdown" by now) could indicate a corium reaction with containment concrete, couldn't they ?

@Edano Google Docs: Spreadsheet should have the plug-ins to do it somewhere...

but i think nancy has the link that could make it work.

TEPCO's water juggling act. www.asahi.com

@Edano, what pieces do we need to make these two things work? We have the visualizer for the gauges and it looked like you found the charting program. We need TEPCO's rss feed - I don't have that, Rob mentioned it? Then do we need something to push the CSV files into the spreadsheets? Does that one for the SPEEDI data give any clues how to do this?