CONSULTING

Fukushima+5 Status Report
Five years have passed since the Fukushima accident began in March 2011. The Japanese
government has launched a reconstruction plan to recover from the Great East Japan Earthquake
over the next five years. This chapter attempts to describe onsite and offsite challenges of the
government's plan, including its impact on the people most affected by the disaster.
Onsite Challenges 268 , 269
Decommissioning Plan
In June 2015, the government revised, for the third time, the medium- and long-term roadmap for
decommissioning, following the second revision made in June 2013. At that time approximately
800 m 3 /day of ground water was flowing from a nearby mountain into the Fukushima nuclear
power plant site; specifically, about 400 m 3 /day of this flow was running into the buildings and the
remaining 400 m 3 /day was running into the ocean. According to the new roadmap, the plan was,
during FY2016, to reduce this inflow to the site by 75 percent.
As for the plans for the removal of spent nuclear fuel from the storage pools, the removal from
unit 4 was completed in 2014. According to the new roadmap, spent fuel removal from unit 3 is
planned to be carried out between financial years 2017 and 2019. Removal from unit 2 is planned
for FY2020 but could stretch into FY2021. It is proposed that the removal of used fuel from unit 1
will also begin in FY2020, but its completion is not expected before FY2022.
As for the removal of fuel debris, it is planned in the roadmap to start the work within 2021
although on which unit is not yet determined. In terms of the method to remove the fuel debris, it
had been planned in the previous edition of the roadmap to fill the entire interior of the
containment vessel with water and then remove the debris. However, due to the concerns about
water leakage from the containment vessel and the possible implications in a seismic event, a
decision was made in the new roadmap to launch a comprehensive, comparative study on several
methods, including implementing the task after partially filling the containment with water or in
the air without using any water. The plan is to decide on the method two years later.
Current Status of Each Reactor
The temperatures in the reactor and containment vessel has dropped to about 15 to 30 degrees
Celsius. However, radiation doses inside the containment vessels have remained high at 4 to 5 Sv/h.
As of 23 June 2016, the amount of water injected into each of the reactor cores of unit 1, 2 and 3 is
268 Inter-Ministerial Council for Contaminated Water and Decommissioning Issues, “Mid-and-Long-Term
Roadmap towards the Decommissioning of TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station”, Ministry of
Economics, Trade and Industry, (Provisional Translation), 12 June 2015, see
http://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissioning/pdf/20150725_01b.pdf, accessed 3 June 2016.
269 Secretariat of the Team for Countermeasures for Decommissioning and Contaminated Water Treatment,
“Summary of Decommissioning and Contaminated Water Management — Progress Status and Future
Challenges of the Mid-and-Long-Term Roadmap toward the Decommissioning of TEPCO’s Fukushima
Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Units 1-4 (Outline)”, 25 February 2016, see
http://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissioning/pdf/20160225_e.pdf, accessed
3 June 2016.
Mycle Schneider, Antony Froggatt et al. 89 World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2016