Emergency workers trying to restore power to Japan crippled nuke plant

PanARMENIAN.Net - Emergency workers racing to cool dangerously overheated nuclear fuel scrambled Saturday, March 19, to connect Japan's crippled reactors to a new power line, as a safety official suggested faulty planning at the complex helped trigger the crisis.

Backup power systems at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant had been improperly protected, said Hidehiko Nishiyama of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, leaving them vulnerable to the tsunami that savaged the northeastern coast on March 11 and set off the nuclear emergency.

The failure of Fukushima's backup power systems, which were supposed to keep cooling systems going in the aftermath of the massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake, let uranium fuel overheat and were a "main cause" of the crisis, Nishiyama said.

"I cannot say whether it was a human error, but we should examine the case closely," he told reporters.

A spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Co., which owns and runs the plants, said that while the generators themselves were not directly exposed to the waves, some of the electrical support equipment was outside. The complex was designed to protect against tsunamis of up to 5 meters (16 feet), he said. Media reports say the tsunami was at least 6 meters (20 feet) high when it struck Fukushima.

Motoyasu Tamaki also acknowledged that the complex was old, and might not have been as well-equipped as newer facilities, the Associated Press reports.

Meanwhile, plant operators said they would reconnect four of the plant's six reactor units to a power grid Saturday. Although a replacement power line reached the complex Friday, workers had to methodically work through badly damaged and deeply complex electrical systems to make the final linkups without setting of a spark and potentially an explosion.

Even once the power is reconnected, it is not clear if the cooling systems will still work.