Temperatures rose unexpectedly in one of the reactors at the embattled Fukushima nuclear power plant this week. The Japanese utility Tepco injected the reactor with boric acid in an effort to prevent a nasty chain reaction.
On Monday, the temperature in Reactor Number 2 reached 158 degrees Fahrenheit, well up from where it was only a few days ago. The temperature should have been stable in the reactor, and the utility says it doesn’t know why there’s been a spike.
Operators at the plant responded by injecting boric acid into the reactor, according to Bloomberg’s Tsuyoshi Inajima. Boric acid is used to capture radiation and help to prevent the radiation from leaking, a spokesman for Japan’s nuclear safety agency told the Associated Press after the disaster in March.
The plant also increased the rate of cooling water being injected to try and lower the temperature. Bringing that temperature down is crucial to prevent a state known by physicists as “re-criticality.” This is one of the things nuclear workers fear the most.
But as the head of the Atomic Energy Research Institute at Kinki University told Inajima, there are also enormous risks to the higher water injection rate. Inevitably more radioactive water will accumulate in the basements at the plant.
– source news.discovery.com