TEPCO to decommission second Fukushima nuclear plant
24 July 2019
Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) will decommission the Fukushima Daini nuclear complex, its president, Tomoaki Kobayakawa, told the Governor of Fukushima province in northeastern Japan at a meeting on July 24, according to Kyodo News.
Fukushima Daini NPP - Image: Joe Moross – CC Wikimedia Commons
The four-reactor plant has been closed since the nearby Fukushima Daiichi complex was crippled by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster.
TEPCO's decision to scrap Fukushima Daini, expected to cost around 280 billion yen ($2.6 billion), will be formally approved at the company's board meeting later this month if local municipalities accept it. Kobayakawa said it will take over 40 years to complete the decommissioning of all four reactors at the plant.
The prefecture has demanded that the utility scrap Fukushima Daini, saying its existence would hamper its reconstruction efforts.
This will mean all 10 nuclear reactors in the northeastern prefecture, including the six at the Daiichi complex, will be scrapped.
It would leave the utility with only the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata Prefecture, northwest of Tokyo, and the Higashidori plant in the northeastern prefecture of Aomori.
Kobayakawa said at the meeting that TEPCO plans to build a new on-site storage facility for the Fukushima Daini reactors' spent nuclear fuel which will be placed in metal containers and cooled using a dry storage method, according to the operator.
No decision has been made on the final disposal of the spent fuel, raising concern that the radioactive waste may remain on-site for a long time.
The Fukushima Daini plant currently has around 10,000 assemblies of spent fuel cooling in pools, according to Kyodo News.
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