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TEPCO stocks are on their way to losing all value

March 30, 2011

Shares in Tokyo Electric, commonly known as TEPCO, dropped another 17.7 percent on Wednesday to 466 yen and trading was later stopped.

Chart: tepco stock 20110330

It seems inevitable that TEPCO stocks will lose all their value and will be driven to zero – unless nationalisation comes first. Now even the largest shareholders are being hit:

Shares in TEPCO’s main bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group , which is also a large shareholder with a 2.7 percent holding, fell 2.1 percent.
Dai-ichi Life Insurance , which is the second-largest shareholder in TEPCO with 4.1 percent stake, rose 3 percent after Deutsche Securities said the impact of TEPCO stock price fall is limited on its embedded value, a measure of an insurer’s worth that includes the present value of future earnings from life insurance contracts.  However, Dai-ichi shares have fallen 18 percent compared with a 10.3 percent decline in the benchmark Nikkei 225 index .

There is a vacuum in the leadership of TEPCO. The President of TEPCO Masataka Shimizu has been hospitalized for high blood pressure and dizziness. Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata will take over operation of the power company. He is 70 years old and faces an unenviable task.

Tsunehisa Katsumata: kyoto photo

Tsunehisa Katsumata served as President of Tokyo Electric Power Co., Inc., from October 2002 to June 2008. Mr. Katsumata has been the Chairman of Tokyo Electric Power Co. Inc., since June 2008. Mr. Katsumata serves as Chairman of the Board of Federation Of Electric Power Companies of Japan. He has been an Outside Director of Sompo Japan Insurance Inc. and NKSJ Holdings, Inc. since April 1, 2010. Mr. Katsumata has been a Director of Tokyo Electric Power Co., Inc. since June 1996. He serves as an Outside Director at KDDI Corp. He serves as Chairman of Evaluation Committee at Japan Finance Corporation.

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TEPCO leadership in disarray as share price drops to 47 year low and Government considers nationalisation

March 29, 2011

TEPCO staff along with SDF forces, police and firefighters at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant are making heroic efforts to get the radiation leakages under control. But they are being let down by the leadership of TEPCO. And the performance of their President  Masataka Shimizu has particularly come in for much criticism.

The company’s stock price dropped 18 % today as shares reached their lowest level in 47 years. TEPCO has dropped to about 20% of the value it had a few weeks ago. The total liabilities that TEPCO may have to face are a long way ftom being known and could exceed $25 billion. As a corporation they could not survive and the Japanese government is considering the nationalisation of just the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant as well as the nationalisation of the entire company as possible options. In any event there is little chance of the current stock holders of TEPCO  ever getting any return or even of holding on to any significant value in their ownership.

BBC reports:

Speculation is growing that the Japanese government may start talks to nationalise Tokyo Electric Power, which owns the Fukushima nuclear plant.

The company has said it will need to raise about $25bn (£15.6bn) to shore up its finances. The talk of Tepco being nationalised has been fuelled by a statement from cabinet minister Koichiro Gemba to the Reuters news agency that a discussion about bailing out Tepco was possible.

But Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the government was not currently considering a nationalisation. “Although details cannot be seen such as how exactly the government is going to nationalise the company, as long as there are concerns that Tepco may be nationalised, investors don’t want to hold the stock,” said Hajime Nakajima of Cosmo Securities.

On Tuesday a flood of sell orders caused Tepco shares to stop being traded temporarily. A day earlier, the shares dropped to their lowest level in three decades.

Tepco shares have dropped to 566 Yen from a 52 week high of 2,500 Yen.

related: TEPCO was ready to give up and abdicate on 14th March

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TEPCO President goes AWOL – not seen in public since March 13th

March 27, 2011

While the toll of casualties keeps increasing it has emerged that TEPCO’s President Masataka Shimizu has gone into seclusion and has not been seen publicly since 13th March. In the meantime the leaderless TEPCO has retracted the very high radiation results from reactor #2.

The National police Agency’s figures for casualties from the earthquake and tsunami, as of Sunday night, exceeds 27,000 killed or missing:

Number of people killed 10,804

Number of people missing 16,244

At the Fukushima plant TEPCO has retracted the measurements of high radioactivity they announced earlier and give the impression, not so much of being clueless, but certainly of being without any coherent leadership.

NHK reports:

Tokyo Electric Power Company has retracted its announcement that 10 million times the normal density of radioactive materials had been detected in water at the Number 2 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

The utility says it will conduct another test of the leaked water at the reactor’s turbine building.

The company said on Sunday evening that the data for iodine-134 announced earlier in the day was actually for another substance that has a longer half-life.

The plant operator said earlier on Sunday that 2.9 billion becquerels per cubic centimeter had been detected in the leaked water.

It said although the initial figure was wrong, the water still has a high level of radioactivity of 1,000 millisieverts per hour.

The perception of TEPCO being without leadership first built up when the President Masataka Shimizu tried to abdicate all responsibility for the site on March 14th and was severely told off by the Prime Minister and the government.

But it now emerges from Kyodo News that he has not been seen publicly since 13th March. He seems to have gone AWOL:

Masataka Shimizu, president of Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the crisis-hit Fukushima nuclear plant, fell sick March 16 and took some days off from the liaison office between the government and the utility firm, TEPCO officials said Sunday.

While Shimizu was away from the office set up at the firm’s headquarters, he collected information and issued instructions from a different room of the headquarters building to address the troubles at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station hit by the March 11 quake and subsequent tsunami, the officials said. He has already recovered and come back to work at the liaison office, they said.

A TEPCO spokesperson declined to elaborate on his health condition, but said he did not fall over or need to be hooked up to an intravenous drip.

Shimizu has not appeared in public since attending a press conference on March 13, two days after the catastrophe that wreaked havoc on northeastern and eastern Japan.

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Fukushima Dai-ichi: Reactor No.2 suppression pool leaking highly radioactive water

March 27, 2011

BREAKING!

Very high levels of radiation have been measured in water leaking from reactor #2. It is thought that the breach is in the suppression pool.

TEPCO, says it has measured radiation levels of 2.9 GBq/cc in water from the basement of the turbine building attached to the Number 2 reactor. The level of contamination is about 1,000 times that of the leaked water already found in the basements of the Number 1 and 3 reactor turbine buildings. The measurements indicated 2.9 GBq/cc iodine-134, 13 MBq/cc of iodine-131, and 2.3 MBq /cc for each of cesium 134 and 137. This is clear evidence that fission is continuing.

University of Tokyo graduate school professor Naoto Sekimura says the leak may come from the suppression chamber of the Number 2 reactor, which is known to be damaged. The chamber is designed to contain overflows of radioactive substances from the reactor.

All workers have been evacuated from the reactor #2 building.

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Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant: Reactor vessel integrity may be compromised

March 26, 2011

Leakage of water with high levels of radioactivity  raise the possibility that there may be cracks in the reactor containment vessels of Reactors #1,2 and 3.  One saving grace is that the pressure in the vessels remains high and would argue against a breach. However cracks below the water level that permit some water seepage  cannot be ruled out. It is also possible that the leakage of radioactive water is not from the vessel itself but from some of the surrounding valves or piping.

The Guardian:

A suspected break in the core of a nuclear reactor could have been responsible for a leak of large amounts of radioactive contamination at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, Japanese nuclear safety officials said on Friday, in another setback to efforts to avert disaster at the stricken facility.

In the latest developments, officials have said seawater outside one of the units has registered 1,250 the normal level of radiation, while efforts are under way to pump radioactive water that has pooled around the reactor turbines into safe storage. The BBC has reported that short-term radioactive iodine has been detected at very high levels in the Pacific Ocean near the plant.

US naval barges have started rushing in supplies of fresh water amid concerns the seawater being used to cool down the reactors might be causing corrosion. …

On Thursday three workers were exposed to unusually high levels of radiation after stepping in contaminated water in the turbine building of the crippled No. 3 reactor, which they were trying to cool.

Two received possible beta ray burns to their legs. All three have been transferred to a special radiation treatment facility. Kyodo news reported that the two more seriously injured workers could have suffered internal radiation exposure.

“The contaminated water had 10,000 times the amount of radiation as would be found in water circulating from a normally operating reactor,” said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for Japan’s nuclear safety agency.

Nishiyama said it was unlikely that the reactor had cracked, but conceded that the unusually high levels of radiation appeared to have originated from its core. “It is possible there may be damage somewhere in the reactor,” he said, adding that a leak in the plumbing or the vents could also be to blame.

GE BWR cutaway : image inside.mines.edu

NHK World reports:

A high level of radioactive iodine has been detected in seawater near Japan’s troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The facility was hit by the March 11th earthquake and tsunami.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said on Saturday that iodine 131 in excess of 1,250 times regulated standards was found in seawater collected 330 meters south of a plant water outlet at 8:30 AM on Friday.

The agency says there is no immediate threat to people within the 20-kilometer evacuation zone. The agency adds that as seawater is dispersed by ocean currents the contamination level will decline.

Iodine 131 at146.9 times regulated standards was detected in seawater in the area on Wednesday.

Saturday, March 26, 2011 12:44 +0900 (JST)

Kyodo News:

TEPCO, is currently injecting fresh water into the No. 2 reactor core to prevent crystallized salt from seawater already injected from forming a crust on the fuel rods and hampering the smooth circulation of water, thus diminishing the cooling effect. It has begun injecting fresh water into the No. 1 and No. 3 reactor cores.

At the same time, the firm is trying to remove pools of water containing highly concentrated radioactive substances that may have seeped from either the reactor cores or the spent fuel pools, while also trying to restore power at the No. 2 reactor.

On Thursday, three workers were exposed to water containing radioactive materials 10,000 times the normal level at the turbine building connected to the No. 3 reactor building. On Friday, a pool of water with similarly highly concentrated radioactive materials was found in the No. 1 reactor’s turbine building, causing some restoration work to be suspended.

Similar pools of water were also found in the turbine buildings of the No. 2 and No. 4 reactors, measuring up to 1 meter and 80 centimeters deep, respectively. Those near the No. 1 and No. 3 reactors were up to 40 cm and 1.5 meters deep. ..

The U.S. Department of Energy said in its radiological assessment released Friday that by comparing aerial measurement data from Thursday with previous measurements, the data indicate peak exposure rates in the western side of the Fukushima plant are lower.

 

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Radioactive water leaks from 3 reactors – fresh water cooling started

March 25, 2011

The path to complete cooling and stability will not be smooth or easy at Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant. New complications and setbacks in Reactors #1,2 and 3 are leading to new strategies and actions. There will no doubt be many more such challenges in the days and weeks ahead.

Update 25th March midnight JST (1600 CET):

TEPCO said Friday it has begun injecting freshwater into the No. 1 and No. 3 reactor cores at the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to enhance cooling efficiency, although highly radioactive water was found leaking possibly from both reactors as well as the No. 2 reactor.

The latest efforts to bring the troubled reactors at the plant under control are aimed at preventing crystallized salt from seawater already injected from forming a crust on the fuel rods and hampering smooth water circulation, thus diminishing the cooling effect, the plant’s operator said.

A day after three workers were exposed to water containing radioactive materials 10,000 times the normal level at the turbine building connected to the No. 3 reactor building, highly radioactive water was also found in the turbine buildings of the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors.

Early Friday, concern grew that the high-level radiation leak detected with the workers’ exposure Thursday could indicate possible damage to the No. 3 reactor vessel, but the government’s nuclear safety agency later denied the possibility, saying no data, such as on the pressure level, have suggested the reactor vessel has cracked or been damaged. The No. 3 reactor used plutonium-uranium mixed oxide fuel for so-called ”pluthermal” power generation.

While the high-level radiation is suspected to have come from the reactor, where overheating fuel rods are believed to have partially melted, it remains uncertain how the leak occurred, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, spokesman for the government’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

He said further verification is needed to find out how the radioactive water reached the underground site where the workers were exposed. Huge volumes of water have been poured into the reactor as well as its apparently boiling spent fuel pool since they lost their cooling functions.

In addition to the infusion of freshwater to the No. 1 and No. 3 reactors, it injected seawater to the spent fuel pools of the No. 2 and No. 4 reactors through pipes, and firefighters sprayed a massive amount of seawater onto the No. 3 fuel pool, the utility said.

The government, meanwhile, encouraged residents within 20 to 30 kilometers of the plant to leave voluntarily, citing concerns over access to daily necessities, while maintaining its directives for them to remain indoors and for residents within 20 km of the plant to evacuate.

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Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant: Status on March 25th

March 25, 2011

It is 2 weeks today since the quake and Tsunami struck. The toll of dead and missing exceeds 27,000.

Progress continues steadily but painfully slowly at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant. The radiation levels are fluctuating but pose no health hazard to the general public. Containment vessel at Reactor #3 is damaged and may be causing radiation spikes.

From JAIF

  • The work to restore external AC power for units-1, 2, 3 and 4 is in progress. External AC power to the main control room at unit-2 will be available today. According to TEPCO, the reactor surface temperature at unit-1 increased to  approx. 400 ° C once (design assumption maximum 302 ° C).  Now it has dropped to 204.5 ° C (as of 06:00 on March 25).
  • Meanwhile,  in the turbine building at unit-3, drainage work is also in progress. (10:45, March 25)
  • On March 24, 2 workers, who were working to lay electrical cables in turbine building at unit-3, were sent to the hospital. TEPCO suspected that the nuclear fuel in the reactor or spent nuclear fuel at the pool was damaged and water contaminated with high radioactivity was leaked  to the workspace. Further investigation is now carrying on. These 2 workers were not wearing boots. Another worker wearing boots is safe. (07:15, March 25).
  • As for the coolant of reactors at Fukushima Daiichi, TEPCO would like to switch from seawater to fresh water as fast as possible. The first switch will be carried out at unit 3. (04:30, March 25)
  • Ministry of Defense announced that the Self-Defense Force helicopter measured the surface temperatures of Fukushima Daiichi units-1, 2, 3 and 4 from the air by using infrared rays and  found that the temperature of each units is below 20 ° C. Unit-1:17 ° C; Unit-2: 13°C; Unit-3: 11 °C; Unit-4: 17 °C (as of the morning on March 24). Especially, the surface temperature of the spent fuel pool at unit-3 dropped significantly to 31 °C, compared to 56°C on the previous day. (21:15, March 24)

From IAEA:

Unit 1: Workers have advanced the restoration of off-site electricity and lighting in the Unit’s main control room was recovered as of 24 March, 11:30 UTC. They are now checking the availability of the cooling system. While the pressure in the reactor vessel remains high, Japanese authorities are reporting that it has stabilized.

Unit 2: Engineers are working for the recovery of lighting in the main control room, and the instrumentation and cooling systems.

Unit 3: Around 120 tonnes of seawater was injected in the spent fuel pool via the cooling and purification line. The operation was carried out between 23 March, 20:35 UTC and 24 March, 07:05 UTC. Work was under way for the recovery of the instruments and cooling systems. However, it had to be suspended because three workers were exposed to elevated levels of radiation on 24 March.

Unit 4: The spent fuel pool was sprayed with around 150 tonnes of water using concrete pump truck. The operation was carried out between 24 March, 05:36 UTC and 06:30 UTC of the same day.

Units 5 and 6: Repair of the temporary pump for Residual Heat Removal (RHR) was completed as of 24 March, 07:14 UTC, and cooling started again 21 minutes later.

At the Common Spent Fuel, the power supply was restored as of 24 March, 06:37 UTC and cooling started again 28 minutes later. Work is now under way for the recovery of the lighting and instrumentation systems. As of 24 March, 09:40 UTC, the water temperature of the pool was around 73 °C.

As of 24 March, 10:30 UTC workers continue to inject seawater into the reactor pressure vessels of Units 1, 2 and 3 and are preparing to inject pure water.

 

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Media coverage dies as work resumes at Fukushima Dai-ichi – steam plumes did not raise radiation levels

March 22, 2011

Fukushima hysteria dies down as the media find that their alarmist and sensational reporting is not going to be sustainable.

Perhaps they will return their attention and their headlines to the victims of the earthquake and the tsunami in between the bombing raids on Tripoli.

As George Monbiot puts it in The Guardian:

As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.

A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation.

Now George Monbiot’s views about energy in general, and renewables in particular, are usually quite ridiculous and ill thought through but  where he is absolutely right is of course that in spite of the headlines and the apocalypse scenarios, “no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation”.

The work at Fukushima is difficult and hazardous  and it will test the courage and ingenuity of many – but it goes on even if all the headlines are gone     —– Kyodo News:

Work to restore power and crucial cooling functions resumed Tuesday morning at the crisis-hit reactors at the quake-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, following suspension Monday after smoke was detected at its No. 2 and No. 3 reactors, its operator said.

Firefighters and the Self-Defense Forces also prepared to restart a mission later in the day to spray a massive amount of coolant water onto spent nuclear fuel pools at the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors, according to Tokyo Electric Power Co.

Although white smoke, possibly steam, was found to be continuously billowing from the buildings of the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors, the utility known as TEPCO found it does not obstruct electricity restoration work as radiation levels did not particularly surge at the site.

An external power source was connected to the No. 4 reactor in the morning, making it the fifth of the plant’s six reactors to have regained a power supply needed for the restoration of equipment such as a ventilation system to filter radioactive substances from the air and some measuring tools at the control room.

TEPCO aims to restore power systems to revive some key facilities such as data measuring equipment and functions at a control room by Wednesday for the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors and by Thursday for the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, at a press conference.

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Fukushima Dai-ichi plant: Work stopped as steam rises from reactors # 2 and 3

March 21, 2011

Work to connect power cables to the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors was halted Monday at the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, after smoke rose from the buildings housing the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors, the plant operator said.

TEPCO said it had briefly evacuated its workers after grayish and blackish smoke was spotted at the southeast of the No. 3 reactor building around 3:55 p.m. above a pool storing spent nuclear fuel, though a blast was not heard.

The smoke stopped after 6 p.m., but TEPCO subsequently found that white smoke was rising through a crack in the roof of the building that houses the No. 2 reactor at around 6:20 p.m. The utility said later the smoke is believed to be steam, not from the reactor’s fuel pool. As the No. 3 reactor remains without power, smoke was not apparently triggered by an electricity leak or short-circuiting.

The government’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said no injuries were confirmed in the incidents and that there have been no major changes in the radiation levels at the site.

Before the smoke was detected, external power had reached the power-receiving facilities of the No. 2 and No. 5 reactors on Sunday, clearing the way for the plant operator to restore systems to monitor radiation levels and other data, light the control rooms and cool down the reactors and their spent-fuel storage pools. On Monday, TEPCO finished laying cables to transmit electricity to the No. 4 reactor, as a step toward resuscitating the power systems at the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors, according to the utility and the nuclear agency.

International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Yukiya Amano told a special meeting of its board of governors that the situation at the Fukushima plant ”remains serious, but we are starting to see some positive developments.”

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it will resume the operation on Tuesday after observing the situation at the site.

 

 

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Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant: Status as of Monday (21st) morning

March 21, 2011

Status of Fukushima Daiichi power station as of 09:00, March 21, 2011

Cooling continues and power is gradually being brought to all reactors. Systems and equipment are being checked. All units now have surface temperatures of less than 100 °C. Reactors # 5 and 6 have acieved “cold shutdown”.

External power reached the power-receiving facilities of the No. 2 and No. 5 reactors on Sunday.

The government is also preparing SDF tanks to remove radioactive rubble from around the reactors that has hampered operations as well as a truck with a concrete squeeze pump to pour water from a higher point.

Reactors # 5 and 6 have achieved the status of “cold shutdown”.

Developments at Fukushima Daiichi on March 21st

  • Injecting water to the spent fuel pool at unit 3 of Fukushima Daiichi by Tokyo Fire Department’s task force was finished at around 04:00 am this morning after 6.5 hours operation. Unit 3 has been sprayed with over 3,700 tons of water on Sunday and Monday.
  • Then, the Self-Defense Force conducted the operation of injecting water to the spent fuel pool at unit-4 from 06:37 am to 08:30 am this morning.
  • A construction company in Mie Prefecture voluntarily offers assistance for water injection at Fukushima Daiichi. The government emergency headquarters decided to accept the offer. The company’s 2 special vehicles and 3 operators departed last night to the site. The vehicles can inject water by using its 50-meter-long arm and pumps.
  • Ministry of Defense announced that the Self-Defense Force helicopter measured the surface temperatures of Fukushima Daiichi from the air and found that the temperature of all units are below 100 degrees C.
    • Unit 1: 58 ° C;
    • Unit 2: 35 ° C;
    • Unit 3: 62 °C;
    • Unit 4: 42 ° C;
    • Unit 5: 24 ° C;
    • Unit 6: 25 °C. (as of the afternoon on March 20)

Yesterday the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency reported that the pressure of the Reactor Containment Vessel at unit 3 of Fukushima Daiichi rose once (to 320 kPa as of 11:00 March 20th). TEPCO prepared to lower the pressure but concluded immediate pressure relief was not required. Monitoring the pressure continues (225 kPa as of 22:00 March 20).

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