Salvage Started

It is going to be a long effort to deal with extremely sensitive materials. Tokyo Electric Power Company started on Monday the process of extracting used fuel rods from the reservation pools in broken First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. Why now? It would be to appeal that the situation in the site is improving. Well, contaminated ground water is still flowing into the sea. There is no clear vision for final solution of nuclear waste. Is it right for the company to take on this dismantlement process right now?

The work for extraction began in the forth building of nuclear plant. After the explosion in the accident two years and eight months ago, 1,533 fuel rods have been preserved in the pool of the building. TEPCO carefully salvaged them with a crane set up on the building. The move was as slow as one centimeter every second. Extracted fuel rods were sent to another large pool facilitated inside the plant to keep them cool. It will take one year to transfer all rods. After finishing it, the rods will be contained in cases, according to the plan so far.

One problem is that fragments in current pool may disturb extracting works. There are a lot of small debris of the broken building in the cooling water. They may harm sensitive fuel rods in the process of pulling out. It is possible that the rods will be broken and disseminate radioactive materials to outer space of the plant. To avoid that, the plant is covered by sheets. However, no one can guarantee that it works.

The bigger problem is where do those rods go. They have no place to go after contained in cases. There is no final landfill site in Japan. Although the Government of Japan is trying to establish recycle system of nuclear fuels, no viable plan has been found. It is possible for those rods to be broken by another accident including a huge earthquake.

Process of dismantlement of broken plants is not only that. The most difficult work is to extract debris of melted fuels in plants No. 1 to 3. Due to extremely high radiation, TEPCO is still considering how to do that. It is expected that the beginning of the process should be twenty years later at shortest.

Dismantlement process is expected to require three or four decades. TEPCO needs to be highly careful for dealing with those rods, which may make the company nervous. Not having found effective way to stop leakage of contaminated water to the sea, not fulfilling the duty of paying compensation to the sufferers and cost for decontamination of land, not determining how to maintain power supply without depending on unstable and costly nuclear power generation, TEPCO is unworthy for looking forward reconstruction of its management as an enterprise.