TEPCO lays out plan for reactors

New York Times : On 18 April, TEPCO unveiled its plans for stabilizing the reactors at its Fukushima Daiichi power plant, for bringing them into cold shutdown within the next nine months, and for reducing the levels of radioactive release in the meantime.The first part of the plan is expected to take three months and includes the building of new cooling systems. The three badly damaged reactor buildings would then be covered and filters would be installed to reduce the release of contamination into the air. Since the plant’s cooling systems failed, TEPCO has been cooling the reactors and the pools that hold spent fuel rods by pouring tons of water on them. That water would boil, which in turn led to the release of radioactive steam and runoff. Water in a reactor that is in cold shutdown is below the boiling point, which allows cooling to continue and keeps the fuel rods under water. The Japanese government said that evacuees would be able to start returning to the area in six to nine months.