Burial of Japan reactors trickier than Chernobyl: pump firm
AICHTAL, Germany | Thu Apr 14, 2011 7:32am EDT
AICHTAL, Germany (Reuters) - Encasing reactors at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant in concrete would present much more of a challenge than Chernobyl, according to an executive of the firm whose pumps are helping cooling efforts there.
"In Chernobyl, where a single reactor was encased, 11 trucks were in action for a number of months. In Fukushima we're talking about four reactors," Gerald Karch, chief executive of the technical business of unlisted machinery maker Putzmeister, said in an interview with Reuters.
He said that while no decision had been made in Japan, concrete encasing would be the most sensible solution once the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant has cooled down.
"In my opinion, when a closed-circuit cooling system has been developed and successfully set up, there will be no other option but to encase the reactors in concrete," he said.
He added, however, that the logistics of such an operation -- getting all the necessary trucks on site, for example -- would present a real challenge for plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO).
On Tuesday, Japanese authorities put the nuclear calamity on a par with the 1986 disaster in Chernobyl after new data showed that more radiation leaked from the power plant in the early days of the crisis than first thought.
"Yes, there are certain similarities between the two events, but at the same time I think that we can't really draw comparisons," Karch said.
"There is still a high chance that the situation (in Fukushima) can be stabilized," he said.
The Chernobyl nuclear disaster was the result of a single explosion, he said. That meant that in contrast to Japan the reactors did not have to be cooled and could be encased in concrete soon after the explosion.
