Fukushima Nuclear Cleanup: Will It Do More Good? Or More Bad?
Tepco (Tokyo Electric Power Co), operator of the ill-fated Fukushima nuclear plant that was destroyed in March 2011 by a tsunami that followed a magnitude 9 earthquake, has officially received a full-backing government plan on how to clean-up the crippled plant.
But experts remain wary if this will indeed do good, or more bad, for the earth in general and the immediate environment in Japan in particular.
"If an incompetent doctor killed numerous patients doing routine surgery - and then lied and tried to cover it up - would you let him perform brain surgery on a VIP such as the president?" an article published by Global Research said.
Essentially, Tepco had lied countless times as to how it managed the meltdown of the facility for the past two and a half years, so why let it work around it further, it said.
Japan's nuclear regulator, the Nuclear Regulation Authority, on Wednesday has given its official stamp of approval to an almost 4,000-page plan as to how to go about dismantling the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant as well as hot to carry out necessary after activities.
The mission is to remove 400 tonnes of highly irradiated spent fuel beneath the plant's damaged Reactor No. 4, which contains radiation 14,000 times the amount released 68 years ago by the atomic bomb that fell on Hiroshima.
Moreover, construction-wise, the clean-up plan needs to dismantle more than 1,300 used fuel rod assemblies, from a damaged building that could collapse anytime soon.
"They are going to have difficulty in removing a significant number of the rods," Arnie Gundersen, a veteran U.S. nuclear engineer and director of Fairewinds Energy Education, told Reuters News.
Even Tepco is teeming with anxiety because it knows an operation like this has never been attempted before, and is in every inch filled with danger.
Read more: Damaged Fukushima Nuclear Plant Workers Allege TEPCO Operator's Been Lying on True State of Japan Meltdown Crisis
"Full release from the Unit-4 spent fuel pool, without any containment or control, could cause by far the most serious radiological disaster to date," according to independent consultants Mycle Schneider and Antony Froggatt in their World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2013.
"To jump to the conclusion that it is going to work just fine for the rest of them is quite a leap of logic," Mr Gundersen said.
Japan has targeted to start the operations on Nov 4.