Posts Tagged ‘The Tokyo Electric Power Company’

TEPCO shares recover – somewhat – as short sellers get nervous

April 9, 2011

In the long term Tokyo Electric will need Government support probably in the form of a partial nationalisation but now it is the market traders and their games which control the movement of the share price.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Shares of Tepco ended at their limit-up level of Y420, up 24%, as the Tokyo Stock Exchange imposed a temporarily higher margin rate requirement on new investors. The TSE hiked the margin rate on Tepco shares to a minimum of 50%–of which at least 20% must be cash–from 30% (with no cash requirement), in line with a pre-existing rule set up by the exchange. “The selling pattern has changed, and some people are covering their existing short positions as they are nervous about even stricter rules in the future,” said Yukifumi Watanabe, a trader at Himawari Securities.

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Fukushima Dai-ichi – Tracing the leaks

April 4, 2011

Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors #1 to 4 will never operate again. Politically, it is difficult to see how reactors #5 and 6 could be brought back into operation though technically it may well be feasible. But right now the focus is on finding where exactly the radiation leaks are coming from. The process of tracing all leaks and gradually bringing them all under control is likely to take months rather than weeks.

Some of the nuclear hysteria is dying down and some media attention is returning to the people affected by the quake and the tsunami. And nobody has received anything like a fatal dose of radiation from Fukushima.

And mentioning Fukushima in the same breath as Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which our instant media pundits are inclined to do) is obscene.

TEPCO seems to be getting its house in order and perhaps the efforts of Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata are having some effect.

Update from NHK:

TEPCO, is continuing its efforts to identify the exact route of the highly radioactive water flowing into the Pacific from its damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex.

TEPCO poured a white liquid into a tunnel leading to a concrete pit where the contaminated water is leaking through a crack. This operation was undertaken to determine the exact route the water is taking to the ocean from the pit, located near the plant’s Number 2 reactor.

Monday’s work follows a failed attempt on Sunday to stop the flow of contaminated water by injecting a polymer absorbent into a duct connecting the tunnel with the pit. TEPCO says it will inject the chemical again to block the duct as soon as it has identified the leakage route.

The utility company has also been working on removing radioactive water from the basements of the turbine buildings for two of the plant’s reactors.

The radioactive water in the condensers for the two reactors is being transferred to storage tanks. As soon as the condensers are emptied, the water from the reactor will be drained into them to allow work to begin to restore the reactors’ cooling systems.

Work to remove the water was begun on Sunday at reactors Number 1 and 2. A similar operation will start at the Number 3 reactor on Monday.

As a temporary measure, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency is considering setting up silt barriers near a water intake for the Number 2 reactor.

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Fukushima reactors coped with the massive quake but were overwhelmed by the tsunami wave

April 2, 2011

It is becoming increasingly clear that the Fukushima nuclear plant successfully withstood quake accelerations which were somewhat higher than had been designed for but the real damage came from the tsunami which overwhelmed the defences of the plant and then knocked out all the emergency generators (13 of them in the basement apparently). That in turn knocked out all cooling pumps and cooling functions and then the die was cast…..

Latest IAEA updates on the Fukushima nuclear accident.

image IAEA - credit Google Earth

From JAIF:

The chief executive of General Electric has stressed that the GE reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant have no structural problems. Jeff Immelt spoke to NHK and other media outlets on Thursday. Some observers say the No. 1 and 2 reactors, the oldest types at the plant, have a flaw in their designs. He said the GE reactor has been in service for more than 40 years and is well tested and well-designed and has been upgraded over time. Immelt said in Washington on Thursday that he was aware of the doubts expressed about nuclear power plants. But  he said it is necessary to diversify energy sources at a time of rising oil prices. In the United States, more than 20 reactors are in use that have similar structure to the Fukushima No. 1 and 2 reactors. Questions were raised about their safety after the Fukushima reactors were damaged last month.

Meanwhile TEPCO released further information about the forces measured during the quake:

TEPCO says 3 of the plant’s 6 reactors were shaken on March 11th by tremors exceeding forces they were designed to withstand. Reactor No.2 suffered the largest horizontal ground acceleration of 550 gals, which is 26 percent stronger than the reactor’s design limit.

(A gal – is named after Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) – and is a unit of acceleration equal to 1 centimetre per second per second – 1 cm /s/s)

TEPCO says the readings were 548 gals at the No.5 reactor, about 21 percent higher than its design limit; and 507 gals at the No.3 reactor, topping the capacity by about 15 percent. The power company says the strength of ground motions were close to or within the design parameters at the remaining 3 reactors, and at all 4 reactors of the nearby Fukushima Daini nuclear plant.
The utility says it had been planning to reinforce the reactors so they could withstand horizontal shaking of 600 gals, after the government reviewed their quake-resistance standards 5 years ago. But the work was not finished.

In the event strengthening the earthquake resistance would not have helped. By all accounts the tsunami wave was more than twice the height of the existing wall defences.

Reactors 3 and 4: image TEPCO

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