Japan’s government has presented a new roadmap on the decommissioning of the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plant, according to which it could take 40 years to clean up and fully decommission the plant. TEPCO, the plant operator, will start removing spent fuel rods within two to three years from their pools located on the top floor of each of their reactor buildings. This process is expected to last several years. After then, TEPCO will start removing the melted fuel in the reactors 1 to 3; this process is expected to begin in 10 years and completed 25 years from now. The location and conditions of the melted fuel are not exactly known.
According to the roadmap, 5 to 10 additional years after the fuel debris removal will be necessary to decommission the plant, making the entire process up to 40 years. The roadmap for Fukushima is twice as long the time set aside to decommission the Tokai power plant, the country’s first commercial reactor that stopped operation in 1998. However, this timetable remains ambitious, as the decommissioning of three reactors with melted fuel and spent fuel rods is an "unprecedented project".
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