More than a decade after the second-worst nuclear disaster in history, engineers want to construct a huge water-filled tank around one of the damaged reactors and carry out underwater dismantling work.
IWAKI, Fukushima Prefecture A government-authorized corporation said it is considering submerging the No. 3 reactor building at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant to retrieve melted nuclear fuel debris from the reactor.
Work is under way to decommission the No. 2 reactor of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant on Feb. 1. (Shinnosuke Ito)
Delays have long been common in the decommissioning of the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, but one recent postponement carried special significance.
Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. in December said work to remove melted nuclear fuel from the three destroyed reactors would be delayed by about a year.
The retrieval process was supposed to start this year, marking a milestone in the formidable cleanup project.
It was one of the two paramount targets that the utility had refused to abandon despite its repeated tweaking of the decommissioning road map and the mountains of stumbling blocks it has faced.
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