TOKYO, June 21 (UPI) -- Normal operation of a new water decontamination system at Japan's quake-hit nuclear plant was further delayed Tuesday after its pump halted, its operator said.
The new system at the Fukushima Daiichi plant had been scheduled to restart early Tuesday after being halted Saturday due to other problems which have since had been rectified. However, the plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Tuesday that a pump in the system halted automatically during a trial run, Kyodo News reported.
Tokyo Electric said the pump, used to inject chemicals into the system to decontaminate radioactive materials, apparently stopped due to excessive liquid flow. The restart of the system was put off until Tuesday afternoon to allow for adjustment of the liquid flow.
The newly installed system is needed to remove highly radioactive materials from water accumulating at the Fukushima plant so the plant's damaged reactors can be brought to a cold shut down.
The Fukushima plant was crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, which devastated vast areas of northeastern Japan. Efforts Tokyo Electric in the past three months have included controlling radiation emissions from the reactors, whose cooling systems were knocked out in the disaster. That requires decontamination of vast quantities of irradiated water that have flooded the reactor basements.
The new water decontamination system, which became operational Friday, had to be halted the following day because radiation levels of a component to absorb cesium had reached the component's limit and it had to be replaced earlier than expected, Kyodo News reported.
