13 Mar (NucNet): Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) will intensify efforts to enable the “earliest possible return home” for people displaced by Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear accident and will offer “comprehensive support” to anyone who decides to return home, company president Naomi Hirose has said.
Speaking in the run-up to the third anniversary of the 11 March 2011 accident, Mr Hirose said those efforts include investment in the economic revitalisation of Fukushima prefecture.
He said Tepco was helping the government draw up comprehensive guidelines for anyone thinking of returning to their homes near the accident site. Those milestones include infrastructure re-development, the creation of local jobs and restoration of “daily life-related systems”. All this will help people decide whether or not to return, Mr Hirose said.
But Mr Hirose also warned that Tepco’s future was largely dependent on the success of a three-way “special business plan” agreed with the government and the financial community. The agreement, while providing for victim compensation and other aspects of Fukushima clean-up, also lays out “a pathway to long-term financial independence” for the company.
Mr Hirose confirmed plans to create a new entity dedicated to the decontamination and decommissioning of Fukushima-Daiichi. The new body is likely to be called Fukushima D&D Engineering and will report directly to Mr Hirose himself.
Mr Hirose also said apart from the remediation at Fukushima-Daiichi he wants to see an “intense focus” on the resumption of production at the seven-unit Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear station, the world's largest nuclear power facility.
He said restarting at least two units at Kashiwazaki Kariwa, in northern Niigata prefecture, will be “a milestone” towards Tepco achieving its goals, especially the goal of revitalising Fukushima prefecture.
Kashiwazaki Kariwa plant was not directly affected by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that shut down Fukushima-Daiichi, but it was struck by an earthquake in July 2007 leading to the automatic, safe shutdown of units 3, 4 and 7. Units 1, 5 and 6 were already shut down at the time of the earthquake for periodic inspections.
Unit 2 was technically undergoing a periodic inspection and start-up operations had just begun, but the unit was also shut down safely.
Tepco restarted units 1, 5, 6 and 7 at the plant after repair of damaged systems and inspections. But these units have since been shut down for planned refuelling and maintenance and not yet restarted following government-mandated safety checks in the wake of the Fukushima-Daiichi accident.
At Fukushima-Daiichi, he said, important progress is being made in controlling the “complex challenges” associated with the contamination of groundwater by nuclear debris from the three destroyed reactors.
In the longer term, Tepco has set an ambitious goal to remove fuel debris from at least one of the reactors by the first half of fiscal year 2020. “It will not be easy,” Mr Hirose said. “The technology for safely doing so is not yet in place, and there can be no shortcuts.”
Tepco said it intends to “bolster” efforts to award compensation to those affected by the accident with total payouts expected to be in the region of 47 billion US dollars (USD) (34 billion euros). The total cost of the accident has been estimated by the Japanese government at USD 100 billion.
Tepco said that as part of a new comprehensive business plan, it will improve the regime it has established for rebuilding the area around the nuclear station.
The utility, now under government control, will increase the number of personnel involved in the rehabilitation of Fukushima prefecture and create an internal decommissioning company to handle all decommissioning issues at the facility.
Decommissioning costs have been put at around USD 20 billion, the plan reveals.
Tepco said it intends to create employment in Fukushima prefecture by building a coal-fired thermal power plant and a number of research and development facilities.
Mr Hirose praised Fukushima workers for their work removing fuel from Unit 4: In an update on its website, Tepco said 418 of 1,533 spent fuel assemblies have been removed, all without incident. The process will be completed by the end of 2014.
