Unclear If Fukushima Cleanup Can Finish By 2051 – UN Team

Too little is known about melted fuel inside damaged reactors at the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant, to be able to tell if its decommissioning can be finished by 2051 as planned.

This is according to Christophe Xerri, head of an International Atomic Energy Agency team reviewing progress in the plant’s cleanup, who urged Japan to speed up studies of the reactors to achieve a better long-term understanding of the decommissioning process.

A massive earthquake and a tsunami in March 2011 destroyed cooling systems at the Fukushima plant in northeastern Japan, triggering meltdowns in three reactors in the worst nuclear disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl accident.

Japanese government and utility officials say they hope to finish its decommissioning within 30 years, though some experts say that’s overly optimistic, even if a full decommissioning is possible at all.

The biggest challenge is removing and managing highly radioactive fuel debris from the three damaged reactors, said Xerri, the director of IAEA’s Division of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology.

Addressing reporters he said more information needs to be gathered on the fuel debris and more experience on the retrieval of the fuel debris to know if the plan can be completed as expected in the next 30 years.

The IAEA team’s review, the fifth since the disaster, was mostly conducted online due to the coronavirus pandemic. Only Xerri and another team member visited the plant this week before compiling and submitting a report to Japan’s government on Friday.

In the report, the team noted progress in a number of areas since its last review in 2018, including the removal of spent fuel from a storage pool at one of the damaged reactors, as well as a decision to start discharging massive amounts of treated but still radioactive water stored at the plant into the ocean in 2023.