Fukushima continues to contaminate environment; cleanup expected to take decades
by: Jonathan Benson
NaturalNews.com
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Cleanup efforts at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility were taken up a notch recently, as crews began hauling the spent fuel rods out of the infamous Reactor 4, which sustained terminal damage when the tsunami struck it back in 2011. But this is just the beginning of a massive remediation effort at the site, which experts say could take many decades to complete due to the catastrophic destruction caused by the massive earthquake and storm surge.
After many months of planning, workers have begun carefully removing each of the 1,533 fuel assemblies still sitting in the damaged cooling pool at Reactor 4 nearly three years after the disaster. Each of the assemblies measure roughly four meters in length, according to reports, and individually contain as many as 80 separate fuel rods, which means that there could be as many as 122,000 spent fuel rods in total that need to be vacated from the reactor.
According to the U.K.’s Guardian, a team of 36 workers is currently handling the project, which will involve work taking place at the reactor continually around the clock in six separate shifts. If all goes according to plan, every single spent fuel rod from Reactor 4 will be gone from the pool by the end of 2014, say authorities, who at the same time acknowledge that snags are likely to turn up along the way.
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