Another Japan nuclear reactor fails

Another nuclear reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 facility in Japan has lost its emergency cooling capacity, according to the Associated Press, bringing to three the number of reactors at that facility to fall prey to Friday's magnitude 8.9 earthquake and tsunami. Added to failure of three reactors at Fukushima No. 2, the count is now six overall.

So far, the only reactor that seems to pose an immediate risk of widespread danger is one of the two shut-down reactors at Fukushima No. 1, also known as Fukushima Daiichi, which was disabled by an explosion overnight that destroyed the building housing the reactor and the backup cooling system.

However, officials with Tokyo Electric Power Co., which owns the facilities about 150 miles northeast of Tokyo, reported to the International Atomic Energy Agency on Saturday that the reactor containment vessel, which houses the radioactive core, remained intact and that they were pumping seawater into the vessel to cool it. The action seems to be working, officials said, and there have been no further reports of radiation escaping from the site.

As part of an automatic safety procedure, control rods were inserted into the cores of the reactors following the earthquake, which stops production of electricity. But the cores continue to generate heat for several days after shutdown and must be continuously cooled by pumping water over them and through cooling towers.

Backup generators powering the pumps at the first five disabled reactors failed almost immediately after the earthquake, apparently inactivated by exposure to seawater from the tsunami that swept through the seaside plants. The facilities had to rely on backup batteries that last up to eight hours until additional batteries and generators could be brought in.

Although the company has released no details about the sixth reactor, it appears the diesel generators there worked for a couple of days before they too finally gave out.

source: http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-japan-quake-sixth-reactor-20110313,0,3146984.story