TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Toshiba Corp. has proposed decommissioning four troubled nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power station in about 10 years, much shorter than the 14 years that was needed to dismantle the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in the United States, industry sources said Friday.
Toshiba, one of the two Japanese reactor makers, filed the proposal with Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the Fukushima plant, and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, after compiling it with U.S. nuclear energy firms including its subsidiary Westinghouse Electric Co., according to the sources.
Toshiba believes it can rely on the U.S. firms' expertise from the 1979 Three Mile Island accident to decommission the Fukushima reactors.
According to the proposal, it will take about 10 years to remove the fuel rods in the containers and the spent nuclear fuel rods in the storage pools from the four reactors, to demolish various facilities there and to improve soil conditions.
Another Japanese reactor maker Hitachi Ltd., in a tie-up with General Electric Co. of the United States, is expected to file its own proposal, the sources said.
Tokyo Electric and METI are expected to look into those proposals by Toshiba and Hitachi before actually moving to dismantle the reactors.
The four reactors were crippled due to the March 11 earthquake and subsequent tsunami.
In Japan, Chubu Electric Power Co. is currently working on decommissioning two reactors at the Hamaoka nuclear power plant in Omaezaki, Shizuoka Prefecture, to have it completed by March 2037.
(Mainichi Japan) April 8, 2011
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