Part 1 of 2 Parts
     March 11, 2021 was the tenth anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster where flooding caused by a massive earthquake off the northeast coast of Japan triggered meltdowns and explosions in three of the six nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. I blogged a great deal about the Fukushima disaster and its aftermath. As the years have passed, I have written a few blogs about progress with the clean up and problems all the radioactive water flowing into the Pacific Ocean from the site of the disaster. Recently, there have been reports that Japan is considering releasing a huge amount of stored radioactive ground water into the Pacific Ocean.
     The cleanup job at Fukushima is considered to be the most dangerous and expensive cleanup of a nuclear disaster site in history. An army of engineers, scientists and five thousand workers are still in the process of mapping out a project that many do not believe will be accomplished in their lifetime.  Naoaki Okuzumi is the head of research at Japan’s lead research institute on decommissioning. He compares the work ahead on decommissioning Fukushima to be like climbing a mountain ranges without a map. He told an interviewer that “The feeling we have is, you think the summit’s right there, but then you reach it and can see another summit, further beyond.”
     Okuzumi and others working on the decommissioning have to find a way to remove and safely store almost nine hundred tons of radioactive uranium nuclear fuel. In addition, there is a larger mass of concrete and metal into which the fuel in the cores of the three Fukushima reactors poured when they melted through the containment vessels. 
      The robotic tools that those working on the decommissioning say that they need for the job do not exist yet. There is no confirmed site where the radioactive materials can be permanently disposed of. The Japanese government says that the job could take up to forty years. Outside experts estimate that it might take twice as long as Japan estimates to complete the decommissioning. That would mean that the work could extend into the Twenty Second Century.
      The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) is the fourth largest utility company in the world and the largest in Japan. They are the owners of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The plant once had six operational nuclear power reactors. On the 11th of March 2011, a massive 9.0 earthquake hit off the northeast coast of Japan. The quake caused a huge tsunami that hit the coastal Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and flooded the facility including the backup generators which were needed to keep the nuclear fuel in the reactors cool. With the electricity shut down for the cooling system pumps, the reactors overheated. The nuclear fuel in three of the reactors melted down and blew plumes of superheated steam and radioactive particles into the atmosphere which then spread over Japan, forcing the evacuation of around one hundred and sixty people. One reactor building exploded and brought down a nearby reactor building.
Please read Part 2 next