U.S. radioactive waste management company Kurion Inc. said it had received a contract for deployment of a second Kurion Mobile Processing System to assist clean up efforts at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, based on the performance of the first at-tank system at the site, which has exceeded expectations.
The first system began operating in early October at the six-reactor plant that was devastated in March 2011 by an 8.9-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami. The second system, identical to the first, has been constructed and tested and arrived in Japan last week, Kurion said.
Since early October, the mobile isotope removal system, designed for plant owner Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), has processed more than 11,000 metric tons of water and has achieved removal results of more than 99.95 percent of the strontium from the water, surpassing the company's decontamination targets, Kurion said. The system's aim is to reduce strontium levels from hundreds of tanks on site that contain approximately 400,000 metric tons of water, "a volume that is expanding at 400 tons per day," according to Kurion.
The second Mobile Processing System will begin commissioning this week at the Fukushima Daiichi site and is expected to begin operations in mid-January 2015, according to Kurion, which also played a role in the 2011 delivery of a first-ever external reactor cooling and purification system for TEPCO, which to date has processed about 63 million gallons of water.
That initial cesium removal/absorption system, part of an international response to the disaster among nuclear waste management companies, has removed 70 percent of all cesium activity in the processed water, Kurion said.
"Our ability to deliver a system of this sophistication on an expedited basis of less than three months is a tribute to our employees and fabrication partner HiLine Engineering and Fabrication," Kurion founder and President John Raymont said.