Tokyo, 19 June, /AJMEDIA/
The cooling system of a spent fuel pool for the No. 6 reactor at the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant stopped temporarily for about 10 hours Tuesday due to a power panel glitch, the plant operator said.
The pump sending cooling water to the spent fuel pool started working again at around 6:20 p.m. after a high voltage circuit breaker tripped at around 8:35 a.m., according to Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.
An emergency diesel generator did start up immediately after the circuit breaker tripped but it did not activate the pump.
No significant changes in the water level or the temperature of the pool were observed while the pump was dormant, TEPCO said.
At around the same time the glitch hit the reactor, smoke plumed from the basement of the reactor’s turbine building causing a fire alarm to go off. No injuries were reported.
TEPCO is probing the cause of the incident and the glitch.
There were 1,280 units of spent nuclear fuel and 198 units of unspent fuel inside the pool as of Tuesday, according to TEPCO.
The power panel glitch also temporarily halted the ventilation and radiation monitoring systems of a building used to incinerate waste materials including cleared vegetation.
TEPCO is in the process of decommissioning the power plant after it was severely damaged in the wake of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
