TEPCO to shut 1.1 gW reactor to check malfunction
Source: Reuters News Services via Planet Ark

TOKYO - Tokyo Electric Power Co Inc (TEPCO) said yesterday it has started to manually shut down a 1.1 gigawatt (gW) reactor in northern Japan due to a technical problem in a unit which supplies water to the nuclear reactor.

TEPCO said in a statement that no radiation had escaped into the environment from the Fukushima No 2 power plant's No 2 nuclear reactor as a result of the incident, classified as zero minus on the International Nuclear Event Scale.

The unit in question supplies water to the nuclear reactor when the water level falls below normal levels in an emergency. TEPCO, Japan's largest power company, said that it had been testing the unit when it discovered the malfunction in the unit's valve controling the flow of water.

It began to manually suspend operations from 5:30 a.m. Monday (2030 GMT Sunday) to conduct checks, and expects to complete the shut down at around 3:00 p.m.

Japan has 51 commercial nuclear reactors which provide about a third of the nation's power.

 

Environmental News: Contributed by Aristide Mbiock and Robert H. Essenhigh World Energy News: Contributed by Aristide Mbiock

 

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