Earlier this week TEPCO began its riskiest clean up effort
at Fukushima to date. On Monday, the process of “delicately removing about
1,500 sets of radioactive fuel rods from a storage pool inside a damaged
nuclear reactor building” began in Reactor Four (“Japan Starts Riskiest Work,”
2013). After successfully removing
the fuel rods, technicians will work in “finding and extracting the melted fuel
within the broken reactors, [and] demolishing the buildings and decontaminating
the soil” (West, 2013). TEPCO
estimates that this painstaking clean up process should take 30 to 40 years (“Japan
Starts Riskiest Work,” 2013). That is assuming that there are no other mishaps
and accidents, which have been plaguing cleanup efforts since 2011.
TEPCO’s cleanup efforts are “costly, risky and dependent on
technologies that have yet to fully develop” (West, 2013). And as the Associated Press points out,
“Nobody knows exactly how much fuel melted…or where exactly the fuel went – how
deep and in what form it is” (West, 2013). It seems that many unknowns and
challenges lie ahead for Japan in this cleanup effort. The project is a huge
undertaking and one that the world will be watching very closely.
Japan Starts Riskiest Work at Fukushima Nuclear Plant (2013,
November 18). Voice of America. Retrieved from http://www.voanews.com/content/japan-begins-removal-of-fuel-rods-from-fukushima-nuclear-power-plant/1792153.html
West, Broc (2013, November 20). Uncertainties Abound in
Fukushima Decommissioning. Fukushima Update. Retrieved from http://fukushimaupdate.com/uncertainties-abound-in-fukushima-decommissioning/
This event has been a disaster for nuclear power being seen as a viable renewable source of energy. Many countries have cut back there nuclear spending and who can blame them. It will be interesting to see how this disaster relates the the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island Meltdowns as although a large inhabited area is not deemed uninhabitable the radiation is seeping to ocean effecting a much greater area.
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