TOKYO: The removal of hundreds of tonnes of radioactive debris from Japan’s tsunami-damaged Fukushima nuclear plant has been postponed until at least 2037, operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) announced.
Around 880 tonnes of hazardous material remain inside the facility, which suffered one of history’s worst nuclear disasters following a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
Tepco official Akira Ono stated that preparatory work for the retrieval process is expected to take “12 to 15” years, pushing the earliest possible start date to 2037. This marks a delay from the company’s earlier projection of the early 2030s.
Extracting melted fuel and other debris is considered the most challenging aspect of the decades-long decommissioning effort due to dangerously high radiation levels. While small samples have been collected in trial runs using specialised equipment, full-scale removal operations have yet to begin.
The revised timeline casts doubt on Tepco and the Japanese government’s goal of declaring the Fukushima plant fully decommissioned by 2051. However, Ono maintained that the target remains achievable, calling it the company’s “responsibility” to “figure out how to meet it,“ despite acknowledging the difficulty.
Three of Fukushima’s six reactors suffered meltdowns in 2011 after the tsunami overwhelmed the plant’s cooling systems. - AFP
