Crews are packing a 190,000-pound truck onto a cargo plane so it can fly to Japan and pour water onto damaged nuclear reactors that are spewing radiation.
ATLANTA (AP) - A massive Russian cargo plane roared into Atlanta
on Friday to pick up one of the world's largest concrete pumps,
which has been retrofitted to pour water on a Japanese nuclear
power plant stricken by an earthquake and tsunami.
The 190,000-pound pump designed by Wisconsin-based Putzmeister
America Inc. comes mounted on a 26-wheel truck. Its extendable boom
can reach more than 200 feet, and can be operated two miles away by
remote control, making it possible to shoot water into
hard-to-reach places at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant
in Japan.
If necessary, the pump could also entomb a damaged nuclear
reactor in concrete.
After a 1986 disaster, Putzmeister sent 11
pumps to pour concrete over parts of the Chernobyl nuclear plant in
Ukraine.
"Our whole company feels hopeful that our equipment can be used
to make a difference in helping solve the problem," Putzmeister
America CEO Dave Adams said while watching the plane arrive.
Japanese authorities have struggled to cool the plant's reactors
after a March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out its backup
cooling systems. The facility has been rocked by explosions, spewed
radiation and may have suffered a partial meltdown of its nuclear
fuel.
A Putzmeister official in Japan contacted the Tokyo Electric
Power Co., which operates the crippled reactors, after watching
helicopters and fire trucks struggle to spray water onto the plant.
The company managed to reroute a smaller Putzmeister pump to the
power plant that had been destined for Vietnam. A dozen workers used it to pump 150 tons of seawater into one of
the reactor's spent-fuel pools in three hours, a result that
prompted the utility to request more booms.
Moving such a large pump required hiring a Russian Antonov N-124 cargo jet, one of the world's largest.
After landing in
Atlanta, the towering plane taxied to a stop near the truck. The
plane's nose lifted, revealing a ramp that extended as if the
aircraft had stuck out a green, metal tongue.
Once the ramp was fully constructed, a driver steered the pump
truck into the plane.
That pump and another picked up at Los Angeles International
Airport are scheduled to depart Saturday.
Putzmeister America's
parent company in Germany has already sent a smaller pump and plans
to send another.
The Japanese utility is picking up the cost of shipping the
pumps to the region.
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