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This delay is linked to both structural and economic reasons. Flamanville 3 is the first nuclear power plant to be built in France for 15 years. It is also the first EPR.

In terms of industrial management, EDF has had to review its assessment of the extent of the work to be done, particularly in terms of civil engineering (iron reinforcements and anchor plates, much higher than initial estimates, etc.).

Dr. Lyman is a professional antinuclear activist who has never actually operated a plant. He has a PhD in nuclear physics, but that does not mean that he ever studied anything about engineering or operations. It might not even mean that he studied anything about nuclear fuel.

That consent order covers 33 underground canals of radioactive waste below the barrels, but not the barrels, which are awaiting transfer to the Waste Isolation Pilot Project in southern New Mexico. A record 170 shipments of the legacy waste from the nation's premier nuclear weapons facility were taken to WIPP in the fiscal year that just ended, but the equivalent of some 40,000 barrels remain."The governor wants to get the (barrels) off the hill and protect the groundwater and wastewater," said Ed Worth, who oversees waste cleanup at the lab.The same top priority was approved last week by the Citizens Board, volunteers comprised of former lab workers, retirees, public employees and others, chartered by DOE to make recommendations on establishing the order of cleanup initiatives."All we do is tell them they should," said Lawrence Longacre, a board member expressing frustration that the priority recommendations had no teeth. "Is there any way we can hold their feet to the fire and say do A, B and C?"

Worth told the board their recommendations are being heard and taken seriously, noting that President Obama's budget request this year for lab cleanup "was more than we ever expected."Congress, however, has cut the Los Alamos cleanup request for $358 million to $185 million, raising the question of the lab's ability to meet the consent decree

"Cleaning," "waiting," and "dismantling" are the three key actions in this process. Needless to say, this all needs to be done while simultaneously containing radioactive materials.

In the case of the Tokai Nuclear Power Plant, the first commercial plant to undergo decommissioning, spent fuel was removed over a span of three years beginning in 1998, and was transported to Britain for reprocessing. Dismantling of the facilities began in 2001, with current efforts being made toward the dismantling of heat exchangers; workers have not yet begun to take the reactor itself apart. The entire process is expected to be an 88.5-billion-yen project involving 563,000 people.

Hitachi Ltd., which manufactures nuclear reactors, says that it "generally takes about 30 years" to decommission a reactor. The Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant's No. 1 and No. 2 reactors operated by Chubu Electric Power Co. are also expected to take about 30 years before they are decommissioned.

In the case of the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, meanwhile, the biggest challenge lies in how to remove the fuel, says Tadashi Inoue, a research advisor at the Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry (CRIEPI), a foundation that conducts research on energy and environmental issues in relation to the electrical power industry.

"we must deal with rubble contaminated with radioactive materials that were scattered in the hydrogen blasts and treat the radiation-tainted water being used to cool nuclear fuel before we can go on to fuel removal."

Currently, the Fukushima plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), is desperately trying to treat the contaminated water. Huge challenges remain with regards to the contaminated rubble, as radiation levels of over 10 sieverts per hour were found near outdoor pipes on the plant grounds just the other day. Exposure to such high levels would mean death for most people.

Each step in the process toward decommissioning is complicated and requires great numbers of people. It's a race against time because the maximum amount of radiation that workers can be exposed to is 250 millisieverts.

The breached reactor core is a bigger problem. It is believed that raising water levels inside the reactor has been difficult because of a hole in the bottom of the vessel. It will be necessary to plug the hole, and continue filling the vessel with water while extracting the melted fuel. How to fill the vessel with water is still being debated. If the reactor can be filled with water, steps taken after the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident can serve as a guide because in that case, in which approximately 50 percent of the core had melted, workers were able to fill the reactor with water and remove the fuel within.

Two types of fuel removal must take place. One is to take out the spent fuel in the containment pools, and the other is to remove the melted fuel from the reactor cores. Because the radiation levels of the water in the spent fuel pools have not shown any significant changes from before the crisis, it is believed that the spent fuel has not suffered much damage. However, removing it will require repairing and reinstalling cranes to hoist the fuel rods out.

Prefacing the following as "a personal opinion," Inoue says: "Building a car that can protect the people inside as much as possible from radioactive materials, and attaching an industrial robotic arm to the car that can be manipulated by those people could be one way to go about it."

Inoue predicts that removal of spent fuel from the containment pools will begin about five years after the crisis, and about 10 years in the case of melted fuel from the reactor core. Work on the four reactors at the Fukushima plant will probably take several years.

"Unless we look at the actual reactors and take and analyze fuel samples, we can't know for sure," Inoue adds. Plus, even if workers succeed in removing the fuel, reprocessing it is an even more difficult task. A review of processing methods and storage sites, moreover, has yet to take place.

Meanwhile, at least one expert says he doesn't believe that workers will be able to remove the melted fuel from the crippled plant.

"If there's 10 sieverts per hour of radiation outside, then the levels must be much higher closer to the reactor core," says Tadahiro Katsuta, an associate professor at Meiji University and an expert in reactor engineering and reactor policy who was once a member of an anti-nuclear non-profit organization called Citizens' Nuclear Information Center (CNIC). "The fuel has melted, and we haven't been able to cool it consistently. If work is begun five or 10 years from now when radiation levels have not yet sufficiently gone down, workers' health could be at serious risk."

Katsuta predicts that it will probably take at least 10 years just to determine whether it is possible to remove the fuel. He adds that it could very well take 50 years before the task of dismantling the reactor and other facilities is completed.

What Katsuta has in mind is a Chernobyl-style concrete sarcophagus, which would entail cloaking the melted tomb with massive amounts of concrete. "How could we simultaneously dismantle four reactors that have been contaminated to the extent that they have by radioactive materials?" asks Katsuta. "Japan has little experience in decommissioning reactors, and this case is quite different from standard decommissioning processes. It's not realistic to think we can revert the site back to a vacant lot. I think we should be considering options such as entombing the site with concrete or setting up a protective dome over the damaged reactor buildings

what we face is a great unknown to all of mankind.

Richard Zuercher, spokesman for Dominion power's nuclear operations, said none is leaking, all are intact, and there is no danger to the public or plant employees. "The earthquake did move, slightly, some of the dry storage casks on the pad," he said. The steel casks, which weigh up to 115 tons when loaded, shifted between an inch and 4 inches. "We're evaluating whether we need to move them back," Zuercher said.

After powering each reactor for about nine months, the fuel is spent, then shifted into a swimming-pool-like container to cool underwater for several years. When cool enough, the fuel assemblies are shifted to the casks and stored outside the reactor containment domes on pads in a secure area. Each cask contains 32 fuel assemblies.

Plans for a permanent, national repository for the fuel, which remains radioactive for thousands of years, are still in a holding pattern. So the material is accumulating at the nation's 104 commercial nuclear reactors. Environmental groups argue that spent-fuel pool and storage casks are inviting targets for terrorists; the industry maintains both are safe and secure.

The topic has come up in recent years at North Anna because Dominion has an application pending with the NRC for a third reactor. The plant is on Lake Anna in Louisa County, near Mineral. The news about the fuel-storage casks comes as a special Nuclear Regulatory Commission team continues its work at North Anna. The team arrived earlier this week to look into reports that ground motion from the quake may have exceeded the plant's design.