Japan to delay Fukushima N-Fuel removal by 3 years

September 26, 2017

TOKYO- The Japanese government decided Tuesday to postpone its plan to remove nuclear fuel from spent fuel pools at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant by some three years.

According to its revised schedule for decommissioning the disaster-crippled power plant in northeastern Japan, the government plans to start work to remove nuclear fuel stored in the pools of the plant's No. 1 and No. 2 reactors around fiscal 2023.

Both reactors, as well as the No. 3 reactor, experienced meltdowns after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

The government also put off, from the first half of fiscal 2018 to within fiscal 2019, the timing for deciding which of the three heavily damaged reactors will be the first to collect melted nuclear fuel debris from. However, it kept unchanged the schedule for starting the collection work sometime during 2021.

The delay in taking fuel out of the fuel pool of the No. 1 reactor, whose building suffered major damage due to a hydrogen explosion following the 2011 disaster, comes after it was learned that it will take longer than expected to remove rubble on the floor where the pool is located, government officials said.

As for the No. 2 reactor, whose building escaped a hydrogen blast, the government decided that a delay is necessary to give it more time to take steps to prevent radioactive material from spreading during the dismantling process of its roof and walls, the officials said.

Regarding the collection of melted nuclear fuel debris, the government plans to adopt a method proposed by government-backed Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corp. in which fuel debris will be removed from the side of the containment vessels of the reactors. Jiji Press