Fuel Rod Removal Operation Begins At Tsunami-hit Fukushima

rtoz writes "TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) has started removing fuel rods from a storage pond at the Unit 4 reactor building of Tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear power station in Japan. The first of the fuel-rod assemblies at the plant's No. 4 reactor building was transferred from an underwater rack on the fifth floor to a portable cask. This step is an early milestone in decommissioning the facility amid doubts about whether the rods had been damaged and posed a radiation risk. 22 unused fuels will be moved to the cask a task which is planned to be completed by November 19. After being filled with fuel, the cask will be closed with a lid, and following decontamination, will be taken down to ground level and transported to the common spent fuel pool on a trailer. It is planned to take approximately one week from placing the fuel into the cask at the spent fuel pool to storing it in the common pool. The entire removal of all fuel inside the Unit 4 spent fuel pool is planned to take until the end of 2014."

Comments

something's missing from the news release

[swschrad]

I didn't see the expected statement that these idiots will parade the hot rods through downtown Tokyo to reassure everybody they have the situation well under control.

Re:Reprocessing

[nojayuk]

Reagan reversed the ban Carter imposed on commercial reprocessing of spent fuel in the US in the early 80s. Nobody has funded a reprocessing operation (other than the lines used to produce weapons-grade materials from military breeder reactors) in the US for various reasons; raw uranium is cheap, nobody wants to use MOX fuel for cost and operating licence reasons and the US government is in charge of making spent fuel go away for which the generating companies pay a levy, currently over $30 billion dollars over the past few decades (it's what paid for Yucca Mountain).

Re:Reprocessing

[MrL0G1C]

disallowed in the United States for purely political reasons.

From that which you linked:

In March 1999, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) reversed its policy and signed a contract with a consortium of Duke Energy, COGEMA, and Stone & Webster (DCS) to design and operate a mixed oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication facility. Site preparation at the Savannah River Site (South Carolina) began in October 2005.[11] In 2011 the New York Times reported "...11 years after the government awarded a construction contract, the cost of the project has soared to nearly $5 billion. The vast concrete and steel structure is a half-finished hulk, and the government has yet to find a single customer, despite offers of lucrative subsidies." TVA (currently the most likely customer) said in April 2011 that it would delay a decision until it could see how MOX fuel performed in the nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi.[12]

Sounds like no-one's interested because it's prohibitively expensive even with big subsidies from the Gov't.