The crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant in Japan has been facing a shortage of fresh cooling water for over than 15 hours due to a power outage. On March 19, 2013, the Tokyo electric Power company said that it was trying to repair a broken switchboard which might have caused the problem.
The company assured that the pool temperatures were within the safe levels at the Fukushima No. 1 plant. Tepco added that the pools will remain safe for the next four days without fresh cooling water. The utility is busy preparing a back up system in case the problem has not been fixed.
Masayuki Ono, an official from Tepco said, “If worse comes to worst, we have a backup water injection system”. The plant’s command centre suffered a power outage for a short time, however the electricity was restored soon to most parts except to the the equipment which pumps water to the fuel pools.
The utility is still investigating the cause of the power outage and it believes that there might be some problem in the switchboard. They are currently working on the issue. The temperature in the four pools has reportedly increased slightly, but is now well below the utility’s target control temperature of 65 degrees.
