Power still out at damaged nuclear plant at Fukushima in Japan
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TOKYO (AP) - Four fuel storage pools at Japan's tsunami-damaged nuclear plant have been without fresh cooling water for nearly 20 hours due to a power outage, the plant's operator said on Tuesday, raising concerns about the fragility of a facility that still runs on makeshift equipment.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said that pool temperatures at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant were well within safe levels, and that pools would remain safe for at least four days without fresh cooling water. The utility said the reactors were unaffected and no other abnormalities were found.
TEPCO workers were scrambling to find the cause and repair the problems.
Workers were fixing the last of the three switchboards that they suspect as a possible cause of the problem and the utility was preparing a backup system in case the repairs did not fix the issue, TEPCO spokesman Masayuki Ono told reporters.
