A complex water treatment system needed to prevent further release of radioactive contaminants at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant could begin operating as early as tomorrow.
Kyodo News is reporting that the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency hopes to approve plans to begin testing the system later today. Once the Japanese regulators sign off on the process, the treatment system would begin a week-long trial run before entering full operation.
Water treatment has become a crucial step in controlling the crisis brought on by a March 11 earthquake and subsequent station blackout. An estimated 105,100 metric tons of contaminated water has accumulated in reactor unit basements from the tsunami that flooded the plant and weeks of water injections into leaking reactor pressure vessels. A makeshift storage building for the water reached capacity May 26, and earlier this week Tokyo Electric Power Co. indicated the water could rise to ground level and potentially leak by June 20.
Areva and Veolia are engineering the system to decontaminate the water and eventually reinject it into the three damaged reactors. The multi-step process requires removing oil, salt from seawater initially used to cool reactors and high levels of radioactive contaminants. TEPCO set a target of June 15 to have the system fully operational.