![]() “No one really knows how long it will take, but it will be decades and decades and decades.”Īs the deadline for the start of fuel removal edges closer, even industry regulators are beginning to question the methods set out in the current decommissioning plan. “This applies to the government’s and industry’s approach to the whole Fukushima crisis – to give the impression that things are retuning to normal and to weaken public opposition to the restart of nuclear reactors. ![]() “The roadmap is based on political considerations, not technical ones. “The idea that fuel debris removal will begin in 2021 is not realistic – it’s just not going to happen,” he said. Yet Tepco is persisting with the government’s roadmap for the Fukushima cleanup, which envisions fuel removal to begin in 2021 and end between 30 and 40 years later, at an estimated cost of almost $20bn (£14bn).īut Shaun Burnie, senior nuclear specialist at Greenpeace Germany, said the decommissioning schedule was an attempt to convince the public that Japan was recovering from a major nuclear disaster. Two robots specially tailored to negotiate debris inside damaged tunnels and pipes stalled last year when they closed in on the reactors’ highly radioactive innards. The technology needed to send robots deep into the reactors’ bowels – where radiation levels are dangerously high – has yet to be developed. We’ve established a goal and need to show ingenuity to reach it, not take the easy way out.” There are so many people involved that it would be wrong to alter that deadline on a whim. “No one has ever done what we’re doing, but 30 to 40 years is a target that we can work towards. “But we do know that the fuel is in a solid state of cold shutdown. “To be honest, we don’t know exactly where the fuel is and have to carry out more studies,” Masuda said at a recent briefing. Masuda and Tepco engineers who spoke to the Guardian conceded that they still didn’t know where the fuel is located. Reactors 2 and 3 are thought to have suffered partial meltdowns. Of greatest concern, though, is reactor 1, where the fuel may have burned through the pressure vessel, fallen to the bottom of the containment vessel and into the concrete pedestal below – perhaps even outside it – according to a report by the International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning. Workers are scanned for radiation exposure after returning from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. In late 2014, the utility overcame arguably the most dangerous challenge since the meltdown, with the removal of hundreds of spent fuel rods from a storage pool inside a damaged reactor building.īut work on removing the melted fuel – something no nuclear operator has ever attempted – has barely begun.Īll that Tepco knows for certain – although it was slow to admit it – is that fuel in three reactors melted down after the tsunami knocked out the plant’s cooling system on 11 March 2011. Masuda can point to lower radiation levels in and around the plant, better conditions for its 1,200 Tepco staff and 6,000 other workers – including the recent provision of hot meals and a rest area – and progress in containing huge quantities of radioactive groundwater. Five years after a magnitude nine earthquake triggered a giant tsunami that killed almost 19,000 people along the north-east coast of Japan and caused a triple meltdown at Fukushima, the plant has been transformed from the scene of a major disaster into a sprawling building site.
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