IV. Accident Response at TEPCO's Fukushima Dai-Ichi NPS 1
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IV. Accident response at TEPCO's Fukushima Dai-ichi NPS 1. Situation and response from the time the earthquake hit until the arrival of the tsunami (from approximately 14:46 to 15:35 on March 11, 2011) (1) Action taken by the NPS ERC (i) At approximately 14:46 on March 11, 2011, the Tohoku District - off the Pacific Ocean Earthquake occurred and strong tremors of Japanese intensity scale of 6 strong were recorded at the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Station (hereinafter called “Fukushima Dai-ichi NPS”) of the Tokyo Electric Power Co., Inc. (“TEPCO”). As described in III-1 above, Emergency Response Centers were established at both the TEPCO Head Office in Tokyo and the Fukushima Dai-ichi NPS, and then reformed with the occurrence of events and the development of circumstances (hereinafter the Emergency Response Centers at the TEPCO Head Office and Fukushima Dai-ichi NPS are generally called the "TEPCO ERC" and the "NPS ERC", respectively). (ii) The NPS ERC was situated in the Emergency Response Office on the second floor of a seismic isolation building1 of the Fukushima Dai-ichi NPS. Seated around the main table were Masao Yoshida, chief of the NPS ERC and superintendent of the Fukushima Dai-ichi NPS (hereinafter called "Site Superintendent Yoshida"); unit superintendents; deputy directors; reactor chief engineers; and section chiefs of the function teams including the operation, recovery, engineering, and health physics teams. Staff members of the function teams were stationed in booths behind their respective leaders to enable oral communication between the section chiefs at the main table and the staff members in the booths (see Attachment IV-1). When a function team obtained information that needed to be shared with all those at the NPS ERC, they reported it to their section chief, who then announced it via 1 When the Chuetsu-Oki Earthquake occurred in July, 2007, the main administration office building at TEPCO Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Station, where the Station Emergency Response Center (NPS ERC) was to be established, sustained heavy damage, requiring initial response activities to be conducted outside the building. Based on the lessons learnt from this experience, a Seismic Isolation Building was newly built and commenced operation at the Fukushima Dai-ichi NPS in July, 2010. This is the building where the NPS ERC was supposed to be established in the event of a disaster. It is of seismically-isolated structure suppressing the base acceleration of an earthquake so that the installations could function properly even against the earthquake of Japanese intensity scale of 7. And there are an emergency response office, meeting rooms, communication facilities, air conditioning facilities and power supply facilities. -93- microphone so that everyone in the room could hear the announcement directly. When a decision made by Site Superintendent Yoshida and the other leaders at the main table or information provided from the TEPCO ERC to the NPS ERC through a teleconference system was related to any of the function teams, the leader of the relevant team communicated it to his team members and gave them directions. Therefore, the members could review it and carry out the necessary work. In addition, people at the TEPCO ERC was able to share information, monitoring the discussions made at the main table at the NPS ERC and give advice and ask questions via the teleconference system. (2) Action taken at the main control rooms a. General (i) At approximately 14:46 on March 11, 2011 when the earthquake hit, Units 1 to 3 of the Fukushima Dai-ichi NPS were in operation and Units 4 to 6 were undergoing the periodic inspections. There was a main control room for adjacent units; one for Units 1 and 2, one for Units 3 and 4, and one for Units 5 and 6. Until the earthquake, five teams had been working in shifts at each main control room. Each shift team had 11 members comprising of one shift supervisor, one assistant shift supervisor, two senior operators, one assistant senior operator, two main equipment shift operators, and four auxiliary equipment shift operators (see Attachment IV-2). (ii) Immediately after the earthquake, the shift teams (meaning all members including the section chief and the other members shall apply hereinafter) working at the main control rooms played a leading role in controlling the reactors. Some members of other teams, who were off duty at the time of the earthquake, went to their control rooms in charge to help the members on duty while other members stayed in the Emergency Response Office of the Seismic Isolation Building until it was time to relieve those on duty. As a rule of the Fukushima Dai-ichi NPS, the shift supervisors were responsible for making decisions in the event of an accident to control and operate the plants in accordance with the aforementioned "Nuclear Operator Emergency Action Plan at the -94- Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Station." In some exceptional cases, including when they took action requiring the cooperation of other control rooms or when their actions having great impact on plant behavior thereafter, the shift supervisors had to ask the NPS ERC for advice or direction which would then do so accordingly. The shift teams also reported all basic information necessary to control the reactors to the operation team of the NPS ERC even when they did not have to ask for advice or direction. The shift team senior operators reported basic reactor parameters, and the leaders provided other information about specific actions, to the operation team using fixed-line telephones from their respective desks. As a general rule, the members of the operation team of the NPS ERC forwarded every report from the shift teams to their leader and wrote plant parameters and other important information on whiteboards to facilitate the sharing of information within the NPS ERC. The leader of the operation team announced the content of the reports from the shift teams via microphone at the main table and reported directly to Site Superintendent Yoshida. The TEPCO ERC also received such announcements via the teleconference system. (iii) The shift teams, the NPS ERC and the TEPCO ERC thought that they could put the reactors into a state of cold shutdown before the loss of all AC power sources due to the tsunami so long as they implement the prescribed procedures. b. Action taken at the Units 1 & 2 main control room (i) After the earthquake, the shift supervisor tried to grasp the operating status of Units 1 and 2 from approximately 14:46 to 14:47 on March 11, 2011 and visually checked that red indicator lights were on through the warning windows above the control panels in the main control room for the two reactors (hereinafter called "Units 1 & 2 main control room"). He confirmed that all control rods had been fully inserted and the two reactors were automatically scrammed (see Attachment IV-3). The shift supervisor gave directions to the assistant shift supervisor and other members at his desk located between the control panels of Units 1 and 2. Operators -95- sitting at the control panels concentrated their attention on monitoring the plants and carrying out the necessary action under the command of the senior operators. The senior operators reported the status and operation of the plants to the section chief. The shock of the earthquake caused the earthquake and fire alarms to sound in the Units 1 & 2 main control room at that time. The shift supervisor knew that even dust blown up into the air inside rooms activated the fire alarms at TEPCO's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Station (hereinafter called "Kashiwazaki-Kariwa NPS") at the time of the Chuetsu-oki Earthquake in July 2007. Since the fire alarm was designed so that it could not be turned off if a fire actually broke out, he tried turning it off to find out whether or not a fire had started. The shift supervisor was able to stop the fire alarm and thereby he judged that there was no fire within or near the Units 1 & 2 main control room. (ii) From approximately 14:46 to 14:47 on March 11, 2011, the shift team switched the power for the internal use of Units 1 and 2 to off-site power. However, the external power supply did not work because the switchyard breaker was damaged in the earthquake causing the emergency bus2 to lose its power supply. Consequently, the power to the reactor protection system (RPS)3 receiving power through the emergency bus was lost and a signal to isolate the reactor containment was issued, followed by an automatic closure of MSIV. Almost simultaneously, an emergency diesel generator automatically started and the shift team confirmed that the emergency bus was charged by checking the indicator lamp. (iii) At approximately 14:50 on March 11, feed water pump of Unit 2 stopped. The shift team manually activated the reactor core isolation cooling system (RCIC) according to prescribed procedures. As the reactor water level of Unit 2 climbed up at approximately 14:51 the same day, the RCIC automatically stopped. At around 15:02 that day, the shift 2 The emergency bus is a bus that receives power from off-site grid and on-site emergency diesel generators and supplies power to the safe-reactor-shutdown facilities and engineered safety features such as ECCS, the primary containment vessel (including isolation valves), containment core spray systems and so forth. 3 The Reactor Protection System (RPS) is a system that is designed to automatically and rapidly shutdown the reactor (reactor scram), in case a transient event that would impair reactor safety occurs or is anticipated to occur caused by components’ malfunction or operator’s erroneous action.