Tokyo Electric Power Co. has revealed that the completion of spent nuclear fuel removal work at Unit 6 of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station will be delayed by more than a year.
In the pool of Unit 6 of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, there are more than 1,400 spent fuels, the largest amount in Units 1 to 6, and about 200 unused new fuels. We started removing the spent fuel that emits from August last year.
Spent fuel is scheduled to be transferred to another facility on the premises called a common pool, and in order to free up space, fuel with a sufficiently low calorific value is placed in a container called a cask and carried to a dedicated storage facility.
According to TEPCO, three casks have been brought into storage facilities so far, but it was confirmed that the airtightness did not meet the standard at that time. It was found that the cause was that iron rust etc. attached to the fuel floated when it was put in and adhered to the area around the lid of the cask.
Therefore, from now on, the fuel will be washed with water before it is put into the cask, and the completion of removal, which was scheduled to be in FY2023, will be delayed by more than one year to the first half of FY2025.
Fuel removal from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant's pools has already been completed for Units 3 and 4, and TEPCO plans to finish removing all fuel from Units 1 to 6 by 2031.