Sunday evening update

TEPCO has made a press release revealing some further plans at No. 1 reactor building at the Fukushima Daiichi site.

TEPCO has stated that it needs to make the building habitable to meet its goals, which include installation of a new reactor pressure vessel water level detector (it seems the installed equipment has been questionable for some time since the accident) and installation of a new circulating cooling system. This work cannot be done by robots; people have to get in there.

In order to facilitate this, TEPCO will be installing an air filtration system to lower airborne activity. Robot survey of radiation areas and general building situation also continues to support these efforts.

Four "Alara Venti" electrically driven portable air filtration units will be connected to piping to circulate air inside the reactor building and filter it. Their combined capacity will be 1680 cubic meters per hour. The units will actually be located near the air lock in the turbine building so that they are accessible. Once these units have lowered airborne activity inside the reactor building to acceptable levels, personnel access (still with breathing equipment, most likely) will be possible for periods of time.

It's probably very timely that TEPCO is getting this air filtration operational to allow personnel access; they'll need this sooner rather than later if NISA decides not to allow them to fill the dry well up to cover the core with water.

8:10 PM Eastern Sunday 5/1
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