Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda is set to announce that reactors at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant have finally achieved a state known as cold shutdown.
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda is set to announce that reactors at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant have finally achieved a state known as cold shutdown.Noda is scheduled to make the announcement at a news conference on Dec. 16.It means the reactors are now stable and implies that Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the plant, and the government have resolved the crisis triggered by the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake ahead of schedule.The government and TEPCO also plan to reveal a timetable for decommissioning the reactors, which is expected to take more than 30 years. The decommissioning work is scheduled to start early next year.The government announced a road map for resolving the crisis in April, about a month after the massive quake and tsunami knocked out the plant's cooling system, causing a reactor meltdown. Initially, it was envisaged that cold shutdown would be achieved from mid-October to mid-January.Since then, TEPCO has been working not only to achieve cold shutdown, but also to curb the spread of radioactive materials outside the nuclear power plant.As of Dec. 14, temperatures ranged from 38 degrees to 68 degrees at the bottom of the pressure vessels of the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 reactors in which fuel rods had melted. The range met the goal of "lower than 100 degrees." The radiation level at the edge of the nuclear power plant's compound also declined below the set goal of 1 millisievert a year.This led the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and its affiliate, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, to conclude that TEPCO will be able to keep the reactors stable.