Frozen Wall Approved

Nuclear Regulation Authority approved the plan of Tokyo Electric Power Company to operate “frozen wall” in underground of broken First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. Although the wall is expected to block underground water stream flowing into the site, causing radioactively polluted water flow out to the sea, its effectiveness is still doubted. Without any success guaranteed, TEPCO embarked on the construction of unprecedented artificial tundra.

Frozen wall plan is to surround 1F site in underground with frozen bars. On the line around four broken nuclear reactors with the length of 1500 meters, 1568 bars with 30 meter-length will be implanted every meter. Those bars are planned to be frozen to -30 degree Celsius with electric power and expected to freeze the soil around.

Against the original plan to freeze all bars as soon as possible, NRA indicated the risk of leaking highly radioactive water from the building on the ground, caused by decline of water level underground. TEPCO took plan B that would gradually freeze the bars from seaside to hillside. It started freezing on the seaside on Thursday and will finish all bars frozen a month and a half later. TEPCO expects that they will see some effect two months later.

No one actually knows whether the plan works. Even the Chairman of NRA, Shun-ichi Tanaka, questioned the plan. “We would be better not to think that we can control nature,” told Tanaka in his press conference on Wednesday. It is not a fundamental solution to reduce the amount of water flowing into the site. The goal is to dry the buildings up. NPA required TEPCO to record data about water flow. However, it does not make sense that NRA approved the plan of TEPCO, leaving those questions behind.

Uncontrollable water flow underground has been the biggest obstacle against the process of dismantlement of the facility. In addition to frozen wall plan, TEPCO has been involved in “sub-drain plan,” which pumps up the polluted water, purifies it with new facility and pours into the sea. But, radioactive tritium will not be removed in the purification process. Pollution of seawater is still the problem of the plan.

Hundreds of tons of water is streaming underground of 1F site everyday. The water has been expected to be diluted in Pacific Ocean. Frozen wall facility should not be the final solution as long as it would not dry the broken reactors up by itself. The reactors must be cooled down with water anyway. So, it can be said that the broken nuclear power plant is highly vulnerable, floating on the water stream of the nature.