Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings will maintain the goal of decommissioning its disaster-stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant by 2051, a senior Tepco official in charge of the decommissioning project has said.
¡°There¡¯s no need to change (the goal) at the moment,¡± Akira Ono, chief of Tepco¡¯s Fukushima Daiichi Decontamination & Decommissioning Engineering, said in an interview last week, ahead the 15th anniversary of the triple meltdown at the plant on Wednesday.
¡°Last July, we presented a specific method for large-scale debris removal at the No. 3 reactor and reported the need to take 12 to 15 years to prepare,¡± Ono noted. ¡°We¡¯re now assessing its feasibility.¡±
Reflecting on the crisis triggered by a massive earthquake and tsunami 15 years ago, Ono said, ¡°We¡¯re now able to look forward and proceed with the decommissioning project. The amount of contaminated water being generated (at the Fukushima No. 1 plant) has decreased, and we have conducted trial fuel debris removal twice.¡±
Over the coming year, Tepco will carry out key decommissioning tasks, according to Ono. These tasks include removing rubble from the upper part of the No. 1 reactor building, starting in April; recovering nuclear fuel from the spent fuel pool at the No. 2 reactor, by June; and conducting the third trial removal of fuel debris at the No. 3 reactor, also by June.
¡°We plan to finish removing all fuel from each reactor¡¯s spent fuel pool as early as 2031,¡± Ono said. ¡°Regarding tasks other than full-scale debris removal, we expect to present an outlook in the early 2030s. We¡¯ll eventually enter the stage of focusing on debris in decommissioning work.¡±
He suggested that removed fuel debris could be stored on the premises of the Fukushima No. 1 plant. ¡°We¡¯ll work promptly to secure land for debris storage by dismantling tanks becoming empty in line with the release of treated water to the sea.¡±
When asked about the apparent impact of the decommissioning process at the Fukushima plant on local residents¡¯ views of the restart of Tepco¡¯s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata Prefecture, Ono said that safety is prioritized at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant.
¡°Our company remains committed to our responsibility to Fukushima,¡± Ono stressed. ¡°We¡¯ll proceed with the decommissioning project safely and steadily.¡±
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