Five years on, cleanup of Fukushima's reactors remains a distant goal

Removal of nuclear fuel from power plant that suffered triple meltdown following 2011 tsunami could take 40 years or more

In the chaotic two years after its name became forever associated with nuclear disaster, the Fukushima Daiichi power plant “resembled a field hospital”, according to the man who is now in charge of the most daunting task the nuclear industry has ever faced: removing hundreds of tons of melted fuel from the plant’s stricken reactors.

“Now it really does feel like the situation is settling down and we can look ahead,” said Naohiro Masuda, head of decommissioning at the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco).

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.

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.

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.



But work on removing the melted fuel – something no nuclear operator has ever attempted – has barely begun.


All 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.

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. Reactors 2 and 3 are thought to have suffered partial meltdowns.

Masuda and Tepco engineers who spoke to the Guardian conceded that they still didn’t know where the fuel is located. “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. “But we do know that the fuel is in a solid state of cold shutdown.
“No one has ever done what we’re doing, but 30 to 40 years is a target that we can work towards. There are so many people involved that it would be wrong to alter that deadline on a whim. We’ve established a goal and need to show ingenuity to reach it, not take the easy way out.”

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/11/fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-reactors-decommission-cleanup-japan-tsunami-meltdown


They still don't really know what is going on under there.  The earthquake numbers in that area are huge, who knows what the future will bring.

they certainly have a BIG problem

They do indeed.  In the coming years what else about it will they uncover?

Trouble.

Succinct, but absolutely accurate.