Fukushima: day 120

Dear Colleagues:

120th day!
I. Update of the "Stress Test" for all NPPs in Japan
Although Mr. Edao, the Chief Secretary of State, was reported to issue
an unified Government iew on this issue yesterday, such a statement was not
released. It is reorted that there is an disagreement between the Prime
Minister Kan and tere other ministers. The Prime Minister insists that the
results of "stress tests" shuld be necessary in making a judgment for
re-starting the plants in maitenance outage. Whereas the other three
ministers stood on the postion that the "stress tests" are not the
prerequisite of the re-starting. As a compromise, a new idea of developing a "simplified stress test"
only for Genkai NPPs is eported. This halfway approach is being criticized
from both sides. Wih the Prime Ministers firm position, there is a growing
concern that all of NPs will not be able to re-start through the current
political confusion
All of them seem to be saying that an unified view will be issued on
Monay, July 11.

II. Update of installing nitrogen gas charging line into he 1F3 containment
vessel
Yesterday, from 13:35 to 13:44 a team actuallywent near the planned
valve, located 5 meters above the floor level, andconfirmed that the
installation can be performed as planned.
TEPCO relased a dose situation as well as photos showing this operation
in the atached handout today, July 9.
http://www.tepco.co.jp/nu/fuushima-np/images/handouts_110709_01-j.pdf
The dose rate at the elevated patform was as high as 48 mSv/h. Two TEPCO
staffs went into the Reactr Building, assisted with 7 other staffs and
workers. The accumulated does ranged from 0.05 to 5.3 mSv in just 9
minutes of this operation.
The confirmed that there is a valve whose nozzle is unused simply
plugged by n end-cap, which was replaced with an one-touch coupler for
house conection. With this successful work, TEPCO is now confident that
the nitrgen purge line will be installed by July 17, the end point of "Step
1" n their roadmap.

III. Long range dommissioning plan
At a meeting organized by the Nuclear Energy Commission mid- to long
range decommissioning plan was discussed based on a preliminar schedule
distributed for discussion purposes. According to it, first remoal of
spent fuel in the pools will be initiated in 2014, followed wth removal of
core debris from the reactor vessels in 2021. It is anticipted several
tens of years may be necessary to be able to remove all the fuel aterials
from the damaged reactors.
Although these discussions seem to have been made by assuming that a
gross melt-throughhas occurred in all of 1F1-3, the robust objective data,
such as water samplng data as well as the land contamination map do not
support such core damage states. I think we should wait for more sampling
data which should beame available in a matter a few months. I believe
the damaged core did not go that far, even thugh the "feed and bleed"
operation was severely crippled.

Well, let me stop here tonght!


Genn Saji