14 Nov (NucNet): The US expert who led the cleanup at Three Mile Island for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission today endorsed plans for the removal of nuclear fuel from Unit 4 of the crippled Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant, saying preparations have been through and he is confident of success.
Lake Barrett, a former US Department of Energy official who is acting as an advisor to the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), the plant’s operator, told a press conference that while removal of the fuel is usually a routine procedure, the damage to the reactor building has made the job more complex.
But he said Tepco and its partners have made extensive preparations and are using specialised technology designed to meet the particular needs of extracting the fuel from the damaged building and safely moving it to more secure storage.
Mr Barrett said: “Beginning this work shifts the focus from site stabilisation to real progress. When the work is done, and the fuel is brought to an undamaged storage facility, the site will be safer.”
Mr Barrett’s comments came a day after Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority gave Tepco the go-ahead for the removal and transfer of the fuel to safer longer-term storage.
The NRA said in a statement it is going to “watch closely” Tepco’s activities related to the fuel removal.
Tepco said the removal is expected to begin later this month. The company said there are 1,533 fuel assemblies in the pool, with 1,331 used and 202 unused, and their removal is expected to take until the end of 2014.
Removing fuel from a spent fuel pool is “a normal operation”, said Tepco, but because of damage caused by a hydrogen explosion at Unit 4 after the March 2011 tsunami and earthquake, the job entails a risk that is “clearly different from normal operations in terms of working environment”.
Tepco said the fuel needs to be moved because it is sitting in a storage pool that is above ground and in a heavily damaged building that had to stabilised before beginning the removal.
Details of the fuel removal project are online: http://photo.tepco.co.jp/library/131030_02e/131030_01-e.pdf
