Tepco, the operator of the damaged nuclear power plant in Fukushima, announced on Tuesday a postponement of his large -scale withdrawal of radioactive debris due to the complexity of preparations.
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About 880 tonnes of highly dangerous materials are still in the power station, affected in 2011 by a tsunami caused by a magnitude 9 earthquake, one of the worst nuclear accidents in history.
Due to the very high level of radiation, withdrawing the melted fuel and debris is one of the major challenges of the long dismantling process.
Two small samples have already been taken using a telescopic arm specially designed for the maneuver, but the full withdrawal has not yet started.
Tepco, which hitherto had a launch of operations in the early 2030s, said on Tuesday that the calendar would be repelled by several years.
The necessary preparations should take “between 12 and 15 years,” said Akira Ono, head of Tepco, which repels the start of withdrawal at 2037 at the earliest, according to an internal document.
This new postponement questions the common objective of Tepco and the government: declaring the central completely dismantled by 2051, a deadline deemed very ambitious.
Tepco said he wanted to maintain this goal. “It is not necessary to abandon the target for the moment,” said Mr. Ono, believing that it is the “responsibility” of the company to find the way of reaching it.
In November, Tepco had managed to extract a first sample of 0.7 gram of debris, transferred to a laboratory near Tokyo. A second sample was taken in April.
Three of the six reactors of the Fukushima power plant entered after the 2011 tsunami.
