UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Thursday, October 1, 1992
NATION/WORLD UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
5
Japanese power plant avoids nuclear meltdown
Officials criticize plant for delaying notifying residents
The Associated Press
TOKYO — A mistaken flip of a switch by a nuclear power plant worker caused a reactor's cooling pumps to fall, a government official said yesterday, but an emergency system took over and prevented a nuclear meltdown.
The automatic activation of the emergency cooling system prevented radiation from being released by the equipment in the manufacture, 70 miles northeast of Tokyo.
Local officials sharply criticized the Tokyo Electric Power Co., the plant's owner, for not notifying residents for hours about the emergency shutdown of the 18-year-old reactor.
"The case is very serious because it triggered the emergency core cooling system," said Jinzaburo Takagi, a physicist who heads the Citizens' Nuclear Information Center, an anti- nuclear group.
It was the first shutdown using the emergency system since Japan's worst nuclear accident, at Mihama in
western Japan in February 1991, when a small amount of radioactivity was released into the atmosphere.
Tuesday's accident at the Fukushima Nuclear Plant No.2 involved a 784-megawatt light-water reactor, the most widely used reactor design. It uses ordinary water for cooling and to moderate the flow of neutrons that split the atoms that produce nuclear reactions.
The emergency system that went into effect at the plant is the last reliable defense against a core meltdown. The system pours cooling water onto a reactor's nuclear fuel rods to prevent from reaching dangerously high temperatures.
A meltdown could occur if a reactor's rods heat to the point where their uranium fuel starts to melt and uranium is in a paddle on the reactor floor.
The fact that the fuel rods were not exposed meant that the water could continue to cool them and prevent them from reaching dangerously high temperatures.
"There was no fuel uncovered, which is the major thing you worry about with those reactors," said Scott Peters, a representative for the U.S. Council for Energy Awareness, a Washington group that promotes nuclear and coal energy. "There was
no radiation release from the plant.
The system worked as it was designed.
Takagi said the flood of water from the emergency cooling system could have damaged the fuel rods, because of the sudden drop in temperature. Such damage was unlikely, but a thorny inspection would be carried
Because the water fell so rapidly at the Fukushima plant, some Japanese nuclear specialists initially suspected a more serious problem. Many of Japan's commercial nuclear reactors are now about 20 years old, and critics have warned that they are becoming more dangerous. The Fukushima plant was completed in 1974.
Local officials demanded to know why it took the plant 2-1/2 hours to notify them that the emergency system had been triggered.
A Tokyo Electric representative said the company informed the prefecture shortly after the first three pumps shut down. But he said it did not mention the emergency cooling system was activated until the company and government nuclear officials had finished an initial investigation.
The power company often tries to minimize the seriousness of problems at its plants.
Relief worker charged in Florida stabbings
The Associated Press
MIAMI — A National Guard worker who operated a forklift at a depot for hurricane relief supplies was charged yesterday with stabbing to death a teen-age girl and two young men he met at a bar.
tims after the attack
"He cried," said Wayne McCarthy, sonic commander. "We do n't know."
Police steven Steven Scott Coleman, 24, of Tampa confessed early yesterday under questioning by detectives who picked him up at the guard camp next to Florida International University, where the bodies were found.
Coleman was held without bond at the Dade County Jail on three counts of first-degree murder and two counts of sexually assaulting two of the vic
"It's a nightmare, a nightmare," said Ricardo Fernandez, Quisbert's step-father. "There's got to be a motive. Why? Why?"
The victims met Coleman at a bar near the camp early Tuesday, McCarthy said. They got into a fight, Coleman stabbed them with a knife and then sexually assaulted Rodriguez and McGinnis, police said.
Gigi Vales said she had gone along for the ride but had her friends drop her off first because Coleman flirted with her.
Hours later, the four apparently
began arguing and pulled onto a grassy area inside the campus, McCarthy said. Coleman killed all of her horse with a large folding knife, he said.
Coleman, who was in uniform, then returned to the camp where his unit, Company B of the 53rd Support Battalion from St. Petersburg, has been unloading supplies for victims of Hurricane Andrew.
The bloody bodies remained hidden behind the cairt's tinted windows until a campus police officer arrived to ticket the car Tuesday morning.
None of the victims attended the state-owned university. Officials on Tuesday dismissed any similarities to the 1990 student slayings in Gainesville, Fla.
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