TEPCO Begins Tests on Enhanced Water Treatment System

TEPCO announced yesterday that it has successfully begun testing its enhanced ALPS water treatment system at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The new ALPS system builds off the existing treatment system in an effort to increase treatment capacity. TEPCO already installed two additional systems in the past month. The enhanced systems should be capable of processing 1,500 tons of contaminated water a day in total, twice the capacity of the previous system of 750 tons a day. According to TEPCO, testing has begun on the new system as it ramps up to full operation. “Testing of the system will begin by running the high-performance ALPS for six hours a day, ultimately increasing operations to 24 hours a day after the first week or so,” TEPCO said in a release. “It will augment the existing ALPS systems, which consist of Japanese and international technologies, and which were first installed in October 2012. Compared with the earlier ALPS systems, the high-performance system will produce 90 percent less radioactive waste. Rather than producing the "slurry" waste of the older systems, the new system uses a filter.”