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Ion system achieving water cleanup goals at the Fukushima nuclear plant

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Kurion Inc, an innovator in nuclear waste management, said Tuesday that its Ion Specific Media System has been achieving its cesium removal goal of approximately 99.9% at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant since startup on June 17.

Kurion Vice President and Project Manager in Japan, Dr Gaëtan Bonhomme, said: “After a five week design/fabricate/delivery cycle with frequent and significant specification changes right up to shipment, the system was assembled at Fukushima in nine days followed by only one day of cold commissioning and three days of warm commissioning before hot startup with actual waste water. The highly compressed delivery and startup durations were driven by the urgent desire to avoid further problems due to continual aftershocks and the summer rainy season. Because of the short start-up schedule, normal installation adjustments and fixes were exacerbated with some having to be resolved under warm commissioning, or in the case of a mislabeled valve, during the actual waste operations. Kurion and TEPCO worked together around the clock to overcome these issues as an integrated team with excellent cooperation.”

Kurion Vice President of Engineering and Fukushima Project Director, Dr Richard Keenan, added that “Anticipating the challenge to quality assurance posed by the highly compressed delivery and commissioning times, Kurion designed the system with redundancies for pumps, valves, and media capacity. For example, TEPCO has the option of not utilizing any of the Kurion system pumps if an increase to the upstream buffer tank pump discharge pressure is made; converting the system to a highly reliable electrically passive system.

"This improvement will be evaluated along with media and system life extension, return to improved pre-filtration media, installation of shielding on system feed piping to eliminate off-design flushing cycles and reduce dose for safe operator entry during vessel change-out, and other optimizations. Despite the challenging 8-week duration from project award to system startup, when operated in its design configuration the system removes approximately 99.999% of the cesium, the principal source of radioactivity, a performance that is expected to improve as salinity decreases.”

© Business Wire

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

13 Comments
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The water ins't the issue it is the radiation spewing into the air.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Gogogo, and look at radiation monitors across the country, you will find the readings are not so high.. I urge you to look at readings for just north of Brisbane... Theya match current Tokyo readings from that wakwak site... Just go

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Where do they put that cesium?

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what about the toxic ( radiated slug ) ?? Where will that go ?

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Good news, something is actually working. Now, just send the cesium to Okinawa and bury it...

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

im3ngs in reply, where do they put the cesium, it may be a case of how much trust do the directors of Tepco have in their canteen ladies

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First time I heard of the word 'Ion' being used in Japan that was more than just advertising BS.

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five weeks to make this rather complicated device(s), yet a silly "tent" takes more than 5 months :)

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Give that engineering team a medal for creating a working system in only five weeks! I assume they were modifying an existing design, but it's still impressive.

@gogogo - it's evaporated waste water that is carrying the radioactive material into the air. If you clean the waste water, you also effectively clean the air.

@whiskeysour - is Japan being invaded by radiated slugs? Next we'll have to start looking for Godzilla and Mothra. Seriously though, presumably Japan has waste processing facilities which will eventually be required to process the radioactive sludge.

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The filtration system is not treating the melted down cores. Thus, more radiation and radioactive materials are still being discharged.At the same time contamination is becoming more of an issue throughout Japan. Prefectures in Shikoku and prefectures on the other side of Honshu such as Shimane have been contaminated with radiation to date.

This will become more prevalent as long as the broken reactors and fuel stores are not covered. The treatment and disposal of irradiated feed,meat,vegetables and fruit are all an issue too.

Soon, everywhere in Japan will have some sort of Fukushima related contamination.

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@kurisupisu, Well really we already are surrounded by particles from every bomb and melt down to date anyway... So what's your point? How many catchphases and buzz w

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

Nobody with a brain in Shimane is worrying about the radiation. Even when some positive news comes out of this story, everyone loves to find some negative in it.

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@ kurisupisu - the spent fuel pools aren't leaking radiation because they are well below the boiling point of water. It's possible that some radiation is still leaking from the breaches in the pressure vessels, but as long as the water in them is kept below boiling point, the amount of radioactive material lost should be small. Radioactive material doesn't just fly away on its own! The water which they are filtering has been used to cool the cores, so by removing the radioactive material from the water, they are also treating the water in the pressure vessels. The point of the exercise is to set up a closed loop in the process of cooling the cores.

Sadly, all of this could have been avoided if there had been an effective passive cooling system.

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