Hydrogen burst may have occurred at Japan reactor
Date: 14-Dec-01
Country: JAPAN
Chubu Electric, Japan's third largest power utility in terms of electricity sales, found a steam leak from a broken pipe in the 540-megawatt No 1 reactor at the plant in Shizuoka Prefecture, central Japan last month.
The No.1 reactor has been since shut down since emergency alarms sounded. The plant's No.2 reactor was shut down as a precaution after the accident while a third, which was on maintenance shutdown at the time of the accident, remains off line, leaving only one reactor in operation at the plant.
"There was sudden burning of accumulated hydrogen inside a pipe, which could have caused the pipe to be broken," Chubu Electric said in a statement. The company said it was investigating the reasons for the explosion.
It was immediately unknown whether the hydrogen explosion has caused nuclear accidents in the past in Japan.
Chubu has submitted the interim report on its investigation into the accident to the government, the statement said.
Last month, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, a government agency under Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), classified the steam leak accident a "level one" on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES).
The scale goes from zero minus to seven, with seven being the most severe form of nuclear accident.
Japan, heavily reliant on nuclear power, has seen a number of accidents over the past decade that have undermined public support for the country's nuclear programme, which meets a third of the country's electricity needs.