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In a desperate attempt to cope with the continuing crisis since the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdowns, TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) began the risky and complex operation of moving more than 1,300 spent fuel rods from a badly damaged storage pool towards the end of November 2013 [1] amid stern warnings that it should not tackle the task unaided. The Unit 4 pool is precariously perched on top of a tilting, sinking building that could come crashing down in the next earthquake or all by itself [2]. Harvey Wasserman, American journalist, author, democracy activist, and advocate for renewable energy, delivered a petition with more than 150,000 signatures to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon calling for the world to take charge of the operation [3], in vain. Independent researchers have pointed to a litany of possible mishaps. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe himself has sought foreign assistance [4], and a draft proposal by a panel of Japan’s ruling party said that TEPCO should not be in charge of the Fukushima shutdown [5]. In the end, the Japanese government passed a State Secrets Act to impose a news embargo on reports of the continuing crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Plant [6].

Behind the news embargo, we are told that a team of 36 is working 6 shifts around the clock, and will take until the end of 2014 to complete the removal of the spent fuel from the damaged pool, provided no glitches happen [1]. That is just the start. Further fuel rod assemblies are held in similar pools in buildings for reactors 1, 2 and 3. Reactors 1, 2 and 3 were running when the tsunami and earthquake struck and all suffered meltdown. The radiation in the buildings housing the reactors is so intense that access remains limited. More challenging yet is to dig out the molten cores in the reactors, some of which have already burnt through the primary containment and fused with the cladding steel and concrete. That will not start until 2020. It may take 40 years to fully decommission the Fukushima plant. 

Akira Tokuhiro, a University of Idaho professor of mechanical and nuclear engineering, is among those calling for a larger international role at Fukushima. Even for the US nuclear industry, such a cleanup and decommissioning would be a great challenge; all the more so for TEPCO [7]. The lack of experts is worse at the regulatory level: there are none. Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority has no one devoted to decommissioning, said spokesman Juntao Yamada, though it has experts dealing with the ongoing removal of fuel rods from the Unit 4 pool.

Another voice for international oversight is Kiyoshi Kurokawa, head of a Diet panel that investigated the Fukushima disaster [8]. He said the global nuclear power industry needs to share cross-border information to prevent accidents, as in international air traffic control. The transparency from international oversight is necessary to prevent the collusion that contributed to the Fukushima disaster. Kurokawa’s report, released in July 2012, was scathing. It called the disaster man-made and cited “collusion” between TEPCO and its previous regulator, The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, to avoid implementing new safety rules.

Meanwhile, a thousand tons of heavily contaminated water pours through the Fukushima site daily (see Box 1), further undermining the unstable structures, including the damaged building supporting the Unit 4 fuel pool. Also on site are thousands of storage tanks, many of them makeshift, containing hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive water, and they are leaking.