Nuclear plant cooling system manually shut down (Reactor 1)

3.nhk.or.jp ^ | May 17, 2011 | no byline

[ransomnote]

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says workers may have manually shut down the No.1 reactor's emergency cooling system in order to prevent damage to the reactor. It says pressure inside the reactor had dropped sharply after the earthquake struck the plant on March 11th.

Tokyo Electric Power Company on Monday disclosed records of its operations at the plant.

They show that the reactor automatically halted operations after the earthquake.

The emergency cooling system was automatically activated but stopped about 10 minutes later and remained off for about 3 hours until after the tsunami arrived.

TEPCO says plant workers may have manually shut down the cooling system because pressure inside the reactor had dropped sharply from 70 to 45 atmospheres.

The system is designed to cool the reactor even if all external sources of power are lost, but the move to shut it down temporarily means that it did not fully function.

TEPCO says the decision may have been made based on a manual to prevent damage to the reactor.

It says if the system had worked, it may have had more time until the meltdown, so it will investigate developments leading up to the decision to turn it off and whether the move was correct.

[justa-hairyape]

Sometimes taking the wording inside an operators manual literally, can be a problem. One has to always be aware of the context. The bigger picture.

So now we know why the Japanese Tepco/Governemnt and all its money interests denied there was any fuel melting for the first few weeks. They helped cause the meltdown.