IWAKI, Fukushima Prefecture--Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, announced April 7 that the crippled plant will likely generate a massive 560,000 cubic meters of radiation-contaminated debris by fiscal 2027.
IWAKI, Fukushima Prefecture--Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, announced April 7 that the crippled plant will likely generate a massive 560,000 cubic meters of radiation-contaminated debris by fiscal 2027.
The daunting size of the rubble amounts to half the volume of Tokyo Dome, an iconic indoor stadium in central Tokyo, the utility reported during a meeting with the central government to discuss the plant’s decommissioning and contaminated water problem, held in Iwaki.
The amount will be more than double the 250,000 cubic meters of solid waste materials that the utility has accumulated at the plant since the accident triggered by the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, through fiscal 2013, according to the government and TEPCO.
TEPCO plans to reuse or recycle materials of low contamination levels, but it will still require a storage facility to accommodate debris of 160,000 cubic meters, company officials said. The amount is more than 200 times the volume that a 25-meter swimming pool can hold.
The total amount of contaminated rubble and debris will more than double by fiscal 2027 because there is a large portion of concrete rubble that was generated from explosions of reactor buildings and remains untouched.
Trees in the plant compound that were cleared to make space for storage tanks for the ever-increasing volume of contaminated water will be also accounted for as contaminated waste materials, TEPCO officials said.
TEPCO plans to scrap water storage tanks that are no longer in use, metals with low contamination levels and concrete rubble and use them, for example, as materials for roadbeds in the plant compound.
Removing the melted nuclear fuel from inside the reactors, one of the most critical tasks in the decommissioning process, will have started by fiscal 2027.