Twelve years have passed since the accident at the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, and the decommissioning work is entering an important phase as we move toward the start of the removal of fuel debris, which is considered to be the greatest hurdle.
According to the medium- to long-term roadmap for the decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station by the national government and TEPCO, it will take up to 40 years to complete the decommissioning, and the process is roughly divided into three stages as follows.
▼ Phase 1: Period until the start of removal of spent nuclear fuel (within 2 years).
▼ Phase 2: Period until the start of fuel debris retrieval (December 2021).
▼Phase 3: Period until the end of decommissioning (30 to 40 years after the year of the accident).
Based on this plan, it was assumed that the removal of “fuel debris” would have started by March 2023, 12 years after the accident, but the removal has not yet started and is behind schedule.
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