via AnonHQ.com / March 14, 2016 / Radiation in Fukushima was so bad, they couldn’t afford to send people into some places. It turns out, the radiation was so high that even the chrome-domed replacements didn’t fare much better. “It is extremely difficult to access the inside of the nuclear plant,” Naohiro Masuda, TEPCO’s head of decommissioning said. “The biggest obstacle is the radiation.” The solution? Robots. The problem? Robots. “It takes … Continue reading →
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via Citizens Nuclear Information Center / February 2, 2016 / State of the Plant Many of the measuring instruments installed in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (FDNPS) measuring system continue to malfunction as a result of the accident and there is no guarantee of the accuracy of values being measured. However, from the water temperature in the containment vessels and the spent fuel pools, and from the state of … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center / February 2, 2016 / 1) After 5 years, still very little is known about the causes and effects of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. A whole five years will soon have passed since the severe accident occurred at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (FDNPS). Nonetheless, the causes of the accident have not yet been clarified. Which was the main cause of the accident: the … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Science Alert / January 19, 2016 / It’s been almost five years since the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011, but the scale of the emergency means Japan is still at the relative beginning of efforts to clean up and contain the radioactive site. So this week Toshiba unveiled (above) a remote-control robot that’s expected to remove fuel-rod assemblies from the spent fuel pool … Continue reading →
Continue readingBy Takuya Isayama / Asahi Shimbun / January 7, 2016 / A virtual reality system here that will assist in the decommissioning of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant is preparing for full-scale operations this spring. Located at the Naraha Remote Technology Development Center, the system features a 3.6-meter-high display that simulates 3-D images of the interiors of the reactor buildings at the Fukushima plant. The research and … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia CounterPunch.org / September 30, 2015 / The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant No. 2 nuclear reactor fuel is missing from the core containment vessel. (Source: Up to 100% of No. 2 Reactor Fuel May Have Melted, NHK World News, Sept. 25, 2015.) Where did it go? Nobody knows. Not only that but the “learning curve” for a nuclear meltdown is as fresh as the event itself because “the world … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Japan Times / June 15, 2015 / Education ministry data released earlier this month showed that only 84.9 percent of public elementary and junior high school buildings in Fukushima Prefecture had been quake-proofed as of April 1, 10.7 points below the national average. Of the 2,053 buildings, 310 still need renovation and 67 are likely to collapse if a quake measuring upper 6 or higher on the Japanese seismic … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Japan Times / June 10, 2015 / The government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. are planning to push back the start of removing spent fuel at the wrecked Fukushima No. 1 nuclear complex by two to three years from the current schedule, according to government sources. Under an envisioned revised road map for decommissioning reactors 1 to 4 at the plant, which was ravaged by the March 2011 earthquake … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia world-nuclear-news.org / June 4, 2015 / Japan expects to start the retrieval of fuel debris from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2021, the executive director of the Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corporation (NDF) said yesterday. Three of the plant’s six reactors suffered core meltdowns in the March 2011 accident, leaving melted nuclear fuel debris on the floor of their containment vessels. NDF was established in September … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia NHK World / May 15, 2015 / The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant began work on Friday morning to dismantle the cover of the No.1 reactor building. The cover was installed after the March 2011 nuclear accident to prevent radioactive dust from dispersing. The reactor experienced a hydrogen explosion at the time of accident. Tokyo Electric Power Company plans to remove the cover in order to clear … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia the-japan-news.com / April 11, 2105 / The government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. are studying three different plans to remove melted nuclear fuel from reactors at the crippled Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant, it has been learned. The Yomiuri Shimbun obtained a draft outline of an operation road map as well as a strategic plan on technical methods concerning the removal of melted fuel rods in reactors Nos. 1 … Continue reading →
Continue readingBy Hajime Matsukubo / CNIC.jp / March 31, 2015 / Many of the measuring instruments installed in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (FDNPS) measuring system continue to malfunction as a result of the accident. Although there is no guarantee of the accuracy of values being measured, if the values from the measuring instruments are taken as the premise, from the water temperature in the containment vessels and the spent … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia japantimes.com / March 27, 2015 / Tokyo Electric Power Co. has disclosed that a 35-ton piece of machinery debris might be resting on the inner gate of the spent fuel pool for reactor 3 of the Fukushima No. 1 power plant and that the gate is slightly out of position. TEPCO said Thursday that a fuel-handling machine dislodged during the March 2011 quake, tsunami and meltdown-triggered hydrogen explosions is … Continue reading →
Continue readingMarch 24, 2015 / by Mari Yamaguchi / AP / Japanese government auditors say the operator of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant has wasted more than a third of the 190 billion yen ($1.6 billion) in taxpayer money allocated for cleaning up the plant after it was destroyed by a March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. A Board of Audit report describes various expensive machines and untested measures that ended in … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Daily Kos / March 19, 2015 / “Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, destroyed 4 years ago in explosions and meltdowns triggered by an earthquake and tsunami, won’t be truly safe until engineers can remove the reactors’ nuclear fuel. But first, they have to find it.“ So begins an in-depth article in the March 6th edition of the Journal Science entitled Muons probe Fukushima’s ruins. In February of this … Continue reading →
Continue readingBy Julie Makinen / via latimes.com / March 11, 2015 / Neon pink and yellow banners flutter along the roadsides, their gentle flapping breaking an eerie stillness. The houses here are shut tight, the streets are nearly deserted, the fields that once sprouted rice, tomatoes and cucumbers are fallow. Shigeo Karimata dons a hard hat and a mask and prepares to get out of his car. “Some people say, ‘Oh, … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia asahi.com / March 4, 2015 / Around 71 percent of Fukushima Prefecture residents remain dissatisfied with the central government’s handling of the nuclear disaster four years after the triple meltdown forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes, a survey showed. Only 14 percent of respondents were satisfied with the central government’s efforts at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, according to the telephone survey conducted jointly … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia phys.org / January 28, 2015 / A Virginia Tech professor is part of a team of scientists from Japan and the United States that may have discovered a way to remove radioactive cesium from the millions of gallons of contaminated water being held at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant following the 2011 disaster. “Radioactive cesium is the major radioactive component from the reactor,” said Barry Goodell, professor of sustainable … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia world-nuclear-news.org / January 13, 2015 / Work began on the Naraha Remote Technology Development Centre, which is being built by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), in September 2014. The centre at Nahara-Minami industrial park is due to begin full operations in the 2016 fiscal year. The complex will house a mock-up of the lower part of a reactor containment vessel, representing the interior of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia The Guardian / November 14, 2014 / The man in charge of cleaning up the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has admitted there is little cause for optimism while thousands of workers continue their battle to contain huge quantities of radioactive water. The water problem is so severe that the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power [Tepco], and its myriad partner firms have enlisted almost all of their 6,000 … Continue reading →
Continue readingfrom NHK World / November 5, 2014 / Workers have finished removing highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel from one of the reactor buildings at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant. The No.4 reactor had no nuclear fuel when the plant was hit by a massive quake and tsunami in March 2011. But there were more than 1,500 units of spent and unused fuel in the pool in the reactor building. The … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia world-nuclear-news.org / November 4, 2014 / Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has awarded US-based waste management specialist Kurion a JPY 1 billion ($10 million) grant to demonstrate technology to remove tritium from contaminated water for possible deployment at Fukushima. Kurion’s technology is one of three selected by METI in August to go forward to the demonstration phase, alongside offerings from GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy Canada and … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Japan Times / October 30, 2014 / In the first-ever delay in the plans to dismantle reactor 1 at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the government and the utility have agreed to postpone the removal of fuel rods from the spent-fuel pool by two years from the initial plans, NHK reported Thursday. The date of extracting the meltedfuel rods from the reactor core, … Continue reading →
Continue readingBy Eiji Noyori and Hiroyuki Oyama / the-japan-times.com / September 11, 2014 / Three and a half years after the outbreak of the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, efforts to contain water contaminated with radioactive substances at the plant are at a crossroads. Resolving the radioactive water issue is the first hurdle toward decommissioning the plant. However, despite the time that has passed since the beginning … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia RT.com / August 27, 2014 / The tragedy at the Fukushima nuclear plant will cost 11.08 trillion yen ($105 billion), twice as much as Japanese authorities predicted at the end of 2011. The expenses include radiation clean-up and compensation to residents. The research was led by Kenichi Oshima, environmental economics professor at Ritsumeikan University, and Masafumi Yokemoto, professor of environment policy at Osaka City University. They calculated the costs … Continue reading →
Continue readingby Lucas W Hixson / Enformable.com / August 12, 2014: Tokyo Electric has determined that it will cease use of AREVA’s decontamination system, which uses chemicals to remove radioactive materials from water, as it has not lived up to expectations since it was installed. The utility will file an application with the Nuclear Regulation Authority in order to scrap the system. The decontamination system was set up in June 2011, … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia thediplomat.com / August 1st, 2014 / Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has taken yet another hit this week, as a judicial panel has decided to request the indictment of three of its executives over the handling of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster. While a previous indictment was dismissed, new charges are being pursued, mainly at the request of residents in affected areas in Fukushima. Additionally, there are … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia EX-SKF / May 10, 2014 / Just as the start of fuel assembly removal from Reactor 4′s Spent Fuel Pool was anticlimactic, so is the removal of debris from Reactor 3′s Spent Fuel Pool. No one reports it (not even the independent journalists these days), and TEPCO does not publicize. According to the progress report inside the updated Roadmap (4/24/2014; from page 222 to page 233), since December 17, … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Enformable.com / April 8, 2014 / Engineers from Tokyo Electric held discussions with officials from the Japanese government on Monday where they communicated that they are running out of room to store contaminated debris at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. According to estimates provided by the engineers, more than 560,000 cubic meters of debris will be produced from decommissioning activities over the next 13 years. Tokyo Electric … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia NHK World / March 30, 2014 / The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant says it has resumed the process of removing spent fuel from one of the crippled reactors. On Wednesday, an alarm suddenly activated and stopped a large crane, as workers were preparing to hoist a cask containing fuel assemblies from the pool at the No. 4 reactor building. Tokyo Electric Power Company found that a … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia NHK World / March 26, 2014 / Work has been suspended to remove spent nuclear fuel from a storage pool at a reactor building in the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Tokyo Electric Power Company said an accident occurred at around 9:30 AM on Wednesday when workers started removing fuel units at the No. 4 reactor building. The utility explained a large crane used to hoist a cask containing … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia TEPCO / March 25, 2014 / We have been preparing for establishing a new company on April 1, 2014, which will be a new internal entity of the function dealing with decommissioning and contaminated water within TEPCO, for the purpose of clarifying the responsibilities allocation and focusing solely on handling of decommissioning and contaminated water at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. Now the company outline is decided, and … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Japan Times / March 18, 2014 / Tokyo Electric Power Co. halted the operations of all three advanced radioactive water cleanup systems, collectively called Advanced Liquid Processing System, or ALPS, at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant on Tuesday. Tepco made the decision after it found that one of the systems, called B, was not functioning properly. Water samples from System B on Monday showed that levels of beta … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia spectrum.ieeee.org / February 28, 2014 / A radiation-proof superhero could make sense of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in an afternoon. Our champion would pick through the rubble to reactor 1, slosh through the pooled water inside the building, lift the massive steel dome of the protective containment vessel, and peek into the pressure vessel that holds the nuclear fuel. A dive to the bottom would reveal the … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Japan Times / February 1, 2014 / Tokyo Electric Power Co. decommissioned the No. 5 and No. 6 reactors at its meltdown-stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant in Fukushima Prefecture on Friday. The two units were the only ones that survived the Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent tsunami that hit the aging six-reactor plant in March 2011. Tepco, as the utility is known, will now focus on containing … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Boiling Frogs Post / Febuary 28, 2012 / During the nuclear catastrophe at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan’s northeast last March, the world watched in horror as conditions in the plant deteriorated by the day. Despite public reassurances that the situation was under control, we now know that three of the plant’s reactors actually began meltdown within hours and that plans were being made at the … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Asia One / January 15, 2014 / Japan’s government on Wednesday approved a fresh business plan for the operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant that includes restarting idled reactors elsewhere in the currently nuclear-free country. Industry minister Toshimitsu Motegi gave the green light to Tokyo Electric Power’s plan, which involves pursuing the resumption of some operations at the huge Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power station (pictured) in northern Niigata prefecture. … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Phys.org / December 15, 2013 / Japan is incapable of safely decommissioning the devastated Fukushima nuclear plant alone and must stitch together an international team for the massive undertaking, experts say, but has made only halting progress in that direction. Unlike the U.S. and some European countries, Japan has never decommissioned a full-fledged reactor. Now it must do so at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant. Three of its six reactors … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia WBUR.org / December 6, 2013 / Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency are praising Japan for making progress to stabilize the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, which was crippled by an earthquake and tsunami nearly three years ago. This week, the IAEA inspectors wrapped up a 10-day inspection of the plant, where the decommissioning process started a few weeks ago. Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson gets the latest from … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Associated Press / November 19, 2013 / It’s costly, risky and dependent on technologies that have yet to be fully developed. A decades-long journey filled with unknowns lies ahead for Japan, which took a small step this week toward decommissioning its crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant. Nobody knows exactly how much fuel melted after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems. Or where exactly the fuel … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia The Japan News / September 30, 2013 / Tokyo Electric Power Co. President Naomi Hirose revealed in an interview with The Yomiuri Shimbun on Saturday the company’s plans to decommission the Nos. 5 and 6 reactors at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. In the interview, Hirose said the two reactors will never again be used for power generation. The permanent shutdown of the Nos. 5 and 6 … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia The Asahi Shimbun / Sep 21, 2013 / TEPCO, resigned to never restarting its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant as concerns grow over radioactive leaks, will turn the facility into a training base for decommissioning reactors. The plant operator has begun considering turning the 42-year-old plant into what would be called a “decommissioning center,” sources said Sept. 20. The new role for the plant will be included in … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia The Asahi Shimbun / Sep 21, 2013 / TEPCO, resigned to never restarting its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant as concerns grow over radioactive leaks, will turn the facility into a training base for decommissioning reactors. The plant operator has begun considering turning the 42-year-old plant into what would be called a “decommissioning center,” sources said Sept. 20. The new role for the plant will be included in … Continue reading →
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