Our contaminated water inspectors traveled to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan today for an on-site inspection.

The team reportedly focused on the contaminated water storage tanks and the “Alps” facility for cleaning up radioactive materials.

Yoo Kook-hee is holding a press conference in Fukushima today on the first day of the inspection.

Let’s go to the site.

[Yoo Kook-hee / Head of the Fukushima Contaminated Water Inspection Team]
Today, the team traveled to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant to conduct an on-site inspection.

We arrived at the site around 10:00 a.m., and our schedule ended a little before 7:00 p.m. today.

The main facilities that we inspected today were the Polynuclear Removal Facility, the Alps, and the Fukushima Daiichi Plant.

And then the K4 tank group, which is where the contaminated water is measured and stored after it leaves Alps. We toured K4.

And then there’s the control room, which is where they measure, transfer, dilute, discharge, and control the whole process, which we also visited.

So just to give you a quick overview of each of these, the facility that’s commonly referred to as the Alps, we found that there are three of them on site.

There’s the existing Alps, there’s the expansion Alps, and then there’s the high performance Alps.

How does each of these facilities work, how does each of these facilities remove the nuclides, what is the system configuration, and that’s what we focused on. The K4 tank group, as I said, is the tank group that does pre-discharge measurements, and what we wanted to look at here is homogeneity.

So we focused on how homogeneous is the water in that tank so that we can mix it well so that we can get the right concentration, the right dose, because that’s where we’re measuring the concentration.

So we checked the circulation system, including pumps and things like that.

And then there’s the operation control room, as I mentioned, which is where we get signals about what’s going on with the various equipment and control it accordingly if necessary.

So, we focused on how each of the devices that measure, transfer, dilute, and release nuclides, for example, receive signals in the event of an abnormal situation or an abnormal signal, or if there is a problem with the operation, and how to control and operate according to the signal.

So tomorrow we’re going to see the chemical analysis building where we’re analyzing nuclides.

So we’re going to see what procedures they use to analyze nuclides and what equipment they use.

We also plan to check other facilities besides the main facility today, such as how the dilution with seawater is organized, and how the release facilities are organized.

I’ll be happy to answer any questions.

So that’s how I understand it. I saw a facility that was supposed to be homogenizing and then discharging.

So it’s not being discharged right now, so we’re looking at the discharge plan.

In terms of whether the discharge is planned well, we are looking at whether the equipment for homogenization in the K4 tank group is running at full capacity with pumps and such as I mentioned earlier, and we are collecting specific data related to that.

I think we’ll have to look at all of those things before we can make any conclusions about whether or not we’re getting the homogenization that you’re talking about.

[Reporter]
Did they ask for any additional data today or demand any corrective action or anything like that?

[Yoo Kook-hee]
We are always asking for data. Seeing the site means that we can only ask for the actual documents.

But by seeing the site, we can ask for a lot of additional data.

Even today, as we were walking around doing site inspections, there were questions and answers.

We’ve made a number of factual requests based on that.

[Reporter]
Was there anything unexpected or surprising about the site you saw today?

[Yoo Kook-hee]
It was not unexpected or unexpected, but rather an extension of what we have been reviewing for a long time, what we will see on site and what we will check further.

And if you look at it, for example, the additional required materials, which you mentioned. There are such parts, so we proceeded while requesting such parts.

[Reporter]
Who was the guide today?

[Yoo Kookhee]
When I say guidance, I mean on-site guidance, of course, TEPCO officials.

[Reporter]
You came later than expected, is there any reason for the delay and did you see any other tanks? The K4 is actually well organized. Did you see anything else?

[Kookhee Yoo]
You mentioned tanks, so we saw K4 and we saw the tanks in the J group.

The reason we saw the tanks in Group J is that TEPCO did a radioactive environmental impact assessment.

That’s where we took the samples for that assessment.

So we saw the tanks, J1C, J1G, which are related to J1메이저놀이터, and we saw additional tanks.

So that’s what we saw as we walked around the site, and as I said before, when you’re on site and you’re seeing the grid configuration and you’re asking questions, it actually pushes the schedule back a little bit.

So it ended up being a little bit more delayed than we had anticipated…

[Reporter].
You’ve seen enough of what you wanted to see, do you think?

[Yoo Kook-hee]
Yes, we saw all the facilities that we originally planned to see.