Wednesday morning update...

All the wires are still running the story (backed up by official information) that the high-rate leakage of highly contaminated water into the sea off Fukushima Daiichi has stopped and not restarted. TEPCO is analyzing the situation; one has to assume that there's the chance another source could occur... and this is probably, given the circumstances, very prudent. But this is a glimmer of sunshine for TEPCO. In terms of numbers, TEPCO has stated that it injected 6000 liters of the coagulant solution into the ground.

The water situation, that is to say the movement of and/or disposal of low-level contaminated water in order to make room for the high-level contaminated water in No. 2 building continues. Water continues to go to sea from the radwaste facility; the last figure I heard very late last evening was that TEPCO considered it might have put out over 6300 tons of water so far at that point from just that facility. Since I have not run the total figures here yet, let's just look at a couple of the mentioned storage places and figures.

First, TEPCO thinks there might be as much as 20,000 tons of water in each of the three turbine buildings, Nos. 1 through 3, maximum. That in No. 2 is highly contaminated, giving a total just in the plants there of 20,000 tons (max) highly contaminated which you cannot discharge, and 40,000 tons of less contaminated water.

The main condensers have been used as temporary storage, or transfer, sites but the condenser at No. 1 plant holds only 1600 tons of water, while the condensers in the other three plants hold 3000 tons each. The radwaste building can hold up to 30,000 tons of water, and it's in the process of being emptied right now. The 'mega barge' which we've described before should be the next available large storage facility with a capacity of about 18,000 tons max; there are also plans forming to very rapidly build or ship in extra large storage tanks for use on-site with a cumulative capacity of about 27,000 tons. Considering all the capacity available and on the way it appears as if TEPCO will be able to handle all this with the stipulation that water discharge to sea is still allowed for some low-level water.

We didn't mention No. 5 and No. 6, which need to pump the low-level water out of their turbine building drain pits to sea.

The media frenzy over the "7.5 Million Times the Limit" reading continues; luckily, regular readers here are not overly alarmed.

Speaking of things not to get too overly alarmed about: TEPCO is now saying that it might not only inert the drywell and containment spaces in No. 1 plant, but might do it at No. 2 and No. 3 plants as well. We first mentioned this at 6 PM Sunday evening here, regarding No. 1 plant and it appears that while it hasn't been done yet TEPCO might extend this explosion-prevention method to all three plants which have cores installed. TEPCO thinks there's liberated hydrogen in there, either from radiolysis or metal-water, and NISA seems to think that at least No. 2 and No. 3 reactor pressure vessels are no longer pressure tight. (They've been saying this off and on for a while, and JAIF seems to agree.) I myself have questioned pressure vessel integrity on all three plants for a long time now and think nitrogen inertion of all available spaces around the reactor plants, inside the reactor buildings is a wise idea. Perhaps overly precautionary, but wise. Wise enough to do today, unless radiation levels, debris or damage are preventing them from accessing a location to do so.

6:10 AM Eastern Wednesday 4/6
ATOMIC POWER REVIEW