老鼠引發福島核電站停電事故

福島核電站停電事故系老鼠引發

MARTIN FACKLER 報道 2013年03月21日

東京——本周三，受損嚴重的福島第一核電站(Fukushima Daiichi)的運營商說，他們已經發現並確認了一次長時間停電事故的原因：一具燒焦的老鼠屍體。本周早些時候發生的這次事故讓至關重要的冷卻系統陷入了癱瘓。
運營商東京電力公司（Tokyo Electric Power Company，簡稱東電）說，公司下屬工程師查看了一個出現故障的配電盤，發現了灼燒的痕迹和燒焦的老鼠屍體。東電說，似乎是這隻老鼠以某種方式使配電盤發生了短路，也許是因為它在啃噬電線。

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東電把本周一發生的停電事故歸咎於配電盤故障，這次事故切斷了流向四個燃料池的冷卻水，這些燃料池裡存儲着8800餘根核燃料棒。東電花了幾乎一整天時間來恢復第一個受到影響的燃料池的冷卻系統，最後一個燃料池的冷卻系統到周三早間才恢復工作。
東電稱，在發生故障的情況下，燃料池的溫度要到幾天之後才會升高到超過65攝氏度（149華氏度）安全線的水平。儘管如此，電力故障依然讓許多日本 人憂心忡忡地想起了該核電站持續存在的易損性。2011年3月，大地震和海嘯摧毀了該電站的冷卻系統，致使電站出現三重熔融，釀成了自切爾諾貝利 (Chernobyl)核事故之後最嚴重的核災難。
兩年之後的今天，福島核電站依然在依靠臨時冷卻系統運行，其中一些系統是在核事故之後忙亂的數周至數月里拼湊起來的臨時性措施。乏燃料池一直讓人特 別擔憂，因為它們容納的放射性物質比兩年前熔融的三個核反應堆芯要多得多，那一次的泄漏事故迫使16萬人被疏散，是自切爾諾貝利之後最嚴重的核事故。
東電發言人小野正幸（Masayuki Ono，音譯）說，燃料池的溫度正在下降，但還需要幾天的時間才能恢復到停電事故之前的水平。

翻譯：張薇

Body of Rat Is Linked To Blackout At Atomic Site

By MARTIN FACKLER March 21, 2013

TOKYO — The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant said Wednesday that it had found what it believes was the cause of an extended blackout that disabled vital cooling systems earlier this week: the charred body of a rat.
The operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, said that when its engineers looked inside a faulty switchboard, they found burn marks and the rodent’s scorched body. The company said it appeared that the rat had somehow short-circuited the switchboard, possibly by gnawing on cables.

The company, known as Tepco, has blamed problems with the switchboard for the power failure that began Monday, cutting off the flow of cooling water to four pools used to store more than 8,800 nuclear fuel rods. It took Tepco almost a day to restore cooling to the first of the affected pools, with cooling of the final pool resuming early Wednesday.
Tepco said it would have taken several days for temperatures in the pools to have risen above the safe level of 65 degrees Celsius, or 149 degrees Fahrenheit. Still, the blackout served as an uncomfortable reminder to many Japanese about the continuing vulnerability of the plant, which had a triple meltdown in March 2011 after a huge earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems. It was the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
Two years later, the Fukushima plant still relies on makeshift cooling systems, some of which were built as stopgap measures in the frantic weeks and months after the accident. The spent fuel pools have been a particular source of concern because they contain far more radioactive material than the three reactor cores that melted down two years ago, forcing the evacuation of 160,000 people.
A Tepco spokesman, Masayuki Ono, said temperatures in the pools were cooling, though it would take several days for them to get back to their pre-blackout levels.