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Reactor at Tsuruga plant shut down due to fire

Friday, December 13, 2002 at 13:30 JST
TSURUGA — A nuclear reactor at Tsuruga Nuclear Power Station in Fukui Prefecture was shut down Thursday night after a fire repeatedly broke out from a turbine cover, station operator Japan Atomic Power Co said Friday.

The fire was soon brought under control, plant officials said.

According to officials of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, there was no sign of radiation leakage into the environment and there are no safety concerns for the reactor itself.

But there appears to be no precedent for manually shutting down a reactor because of a fire in the turbine area, they said.

Officials of Japan Atomic Power and local fire department started investigating the cause of the fire Friday by interviewing the plant's employees and conducting an on-site inspection.

The fire broke out from a heat insulating cover on the No. 2 reactor's high-pressure turbine at around 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the plant in Tsuruga.

It was temporarily extinguished but broke out again, prompting officials to manually shut down the reactor at 9 p.m.

The fire then re-ignited briefly at around 10 p.m. Thursday and 12:30 a.m. Friday, officials said.

Japan Atomic Power officials said they suspect the fires were caused by super-heated lubricants that leaked from the axis of the turbine. The oil apparently seeped into the insulating material of the turbine cover.

Japan Atomic Power officials said operators of the reactor found lubricants spilled out from the axis of the turbine Thursday afternoon and the first fire broke out when employees were trying to remove the cover of the turbine for inspection.

According to nuclear energy experts at the Fukui prefectural government, the turbine is fed with 280 C steam.

The insulators in the turbine cover were made of fiberglass bags filled with asbestos, the officials said. (Kyodo News)

Soon Tepco Nukes JApan Kim Tong-jung  (Dec 13 2002 - 13:39)

I mean why worry about N.Korean nukes when Japan is keen on Nuking itself out of existance.

With the technology today Hikozaemon  (Dec 13 2002 - 15:35)

You think they couldn't genetically engineer a 30 metre tall hamster to run around on a treadmill in a cage or something. Nuclear power plant safety reports make it sound like they have world war three going on behind them while they are saying - 'oh, nothing to worry about, just a crack in the reactor, an explosion, a major fire, leakage of reactor coolant, mixing of nuclear waste in buckets causing a near sub-critical chain reaction. But don't worry, there is nothing to worry about, we are REASONABLY SURE that no major radiation leakage occurred, or at least NO MORE THAN USUAL, so go about your business everyone'. I am not against nuclear power per se - Japan needs a lot of energy. But, if the power companies cannot responsibly or competently manage it, then the government has to force them to look for alternative means of electricity generation that don't pose such an extreme hazard. Of course, it could have been the zainichis that did this, right?

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