TEPCO is currently impounding roughly 100 million gallons (almost 400,000 tons) of radioactive water on the Fukushima site. Another 100,000-plus gallons (400 tons) of fresh water is being irradiated daily. The system TEPCO has been using is effective only at reducing the amount of Strontium in the water, not any of the other radioactive substances.
TEPCO's plan to build an ice wall to contain radioactive water has not been going well, the company acknowledged August 5. Engineers have yet to overcome the difficulty in freezing highly toxic, radioactive water already pooled on the site. Refrigeration rods emplaced in April failed to freeze the water. They were removed after three months.
Now TEPCO is putting ice in the trenches filled with some 11,000 metric tons (almost 350,000 gallons) of water contaminated with radioactive materials including Uranium and Plutonium. Although TEPCO has dumped in 58 tons of ice, the water has yet to freeze. The company plans to try dry ice next.
Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) has urged TEPCO to solve this problem before the radioactive water starts spilling into the ocean. According to authority chairman Shunichi Tanaka on August 6, "The biggest risk is the trench water. Until that matter is addressed, it will be difficult to proceed with other decommissioning work". It appears that they are getting off track."
TEPCO has yet to make significant progress in controlling groundwater that flows into the site clean and is then contaminated as it flows through, and out. The company has not attempted to divert water around the plant site, as recommended by the International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning (IRID). The water problem is complicated by basic ignorance of realities: TEPCO does not know the exact locations of the three melted reactor cores, nor does it know the precise routes of water entering or leaving the site.
Muon imaging technology and tracking detectors may help TEPCO find the melted cores. On August 8, Decision Sciences International Corp. (DSIC) announced that it had a contract to:
"design, manufacture and deliver a detector and tube arrays that fit into the power plant building. The detector will be part of Toshiba's overall Fukushima Complex project to determine the location and condition of the nuclear fuel inside the plant".
Muon imaging technology makes use of cosmic ray muons to determine material density and type of material scanned". Muon tracking detectors detect and track muons as they pass through scanned objects. Subtle changes in the trajectory of the muons as they penetrate materials and change in direction correlate with material density. Nuclear materials such as Uranium and Plutonium are very dense and are relatively easy to find."
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