12 Years After Fukushima, Removal of Melted Nuclear Fuel Hasn't Started

'Twelve years after the triple reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Japan is preparing to release a massive amount of treated radioactive wastewater into the sea,' writes the Associated Press. 'Japanese officials say the release is unavoidable and should start soon.

'Dealing with the wastewater is less of a challenge than the daunting task of decommissioning the plant. That process has barely progressed, and the removal of melted nuclear fuel hasn't even started.'

Massive amounts of fatally radioactive melted nuclear fuel remain inside the reactors. Robotic probes have provided some information but the status of the melted debris is largely unknown. kira Ono, who heads the cleanup as president of TEPCO's decommissioning unit, says the work is 'unconceivably difficult.'

Earlier this year, a remote-controlled underwater vehicle successfully collected a tiny sample from inside Unit 1âs reactor — only a spoonful of about 880 tons of melted fuel debris in the three reactors. That's 10 times the amount of damaged fuel removed at the Three Mile Island cleanup following its 1979 partial core melt.

Trial removal of melted debris will begin in Unit 2 later this year after a nearly two-year delay. Spent fuel removal from Unit 1 reactor's cooling pool is to start in 2027 after a 10-year delay. Once all the spent fuel is removed the focus will turn in 2031 to taking melted debris out of the reactors.... The government has stuck to its initial 30-40 year target for completing the decommissioning, without defining what that means....
Some experts say it would be impossible to remove all the melted fuel debris by 2051.

Meanwhile, groundwater is creating 130 tons of contaminated water each day, according to the article. The tanks holding that water 'are 96% full and expected to reach their capacity of 1.37 million tons in the fall.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.