U.N. team says it is unclear if Fukushima cleanup can finish by 2051

Right so it hinges on Japan, yes Japan, acting quickly. Got it

A politely rather damning report. How can any competent organisation not have clear targets and objectives on a major multi decade project like this after ten years!! There should be a detailed road map including necessarily research, to a laid out timeline and reasonable indicative costing.

The impression I get is that this has been a shambolic response from the start. It started out as a panicked reaction and has never got its self properly organised since. I hope I am wrong but everything that comes out tends to that conclusion.

2051? That's like saying "too much work, let's have the next generation deal with it".

Which is why climate crisis is upon us, same ideology. Throw these useless geezers in prison and have some smart people solve it. If we can send robots to Mars, we can surely have one that can get inside the Fukushima plant.

Calder Hall, now Sellafield, in the UK, was the first NPP to be decommissioned, was shut down naturally at the end of its working life, and is now estimated to take 70 years to fully decommission, and around 5-7 times over budget.

There are 3 damaged reactors in Fukushima, with massively radioactive corium masses from the melted fuel and structures somewhere in the containment area, where a human worker can last for around 30 seconds before receiveing a lethal doses of radiation, and robots have so far lasted 3-5 minutes, just taking pictures.

40 years is a very low estimate.

The Atomic Energy Society of Japan, an association of academics, said that even if the reactor buildings are demolished in 30 years, the premises of the nuclear plant would remain unusable unless contaminated soil is removed together with the nuclear debris. They compiled a report over 4 years, with an estimate of 100 years for the basic decommission, and another 200 years to be able to resuse the land.

The group also said the amount of debris and workers’ exposure to radiation would be further reduced if the dismantling of the reactor buildings was postponed by decades until radiation levels fall sufficiently.

How angry are future generations going to be, well not so many at the current birth rate. But still angry. This ideology that business first, people….not so much, it will in the future have people shaking their heads. It’s years of History Channel pointing out the obvious. A debacle compressed into a bigger debacle while old men with limps, bad bowels or simply no idea make the decisions for generations.

This is another reason why I try to avoid eating Fukushima foods whenever possible.

What a mess. Mind boggling.

Radioactive contaminants in Fukushima have half lives of millions of years..,

How many dead?

If anyone thinks it will all be complete by 2051, they are dreaming! 2151 is more realistic!

A lot of people will be decesed by then. I personally am not worried about the year 2051.

Nuclear power is evil. Stop wasting billions upon nuclear and instead spend it on tidal lagoons, tidal, hydro electric power, pump storage, wind and solar. There are many non fossil fuel options. Let's go there.

I wonder just how many more tsunamis will have impacted that area between now and then? Does Japan not realise it can all happen again? And at any time? If I was in power I'd be closing permanently all nuclear sites potentially subject to tsunami. And sealing up the Fukushima place in a waterproof concrete coffin.

In 1979 I was part of a team which tested the safety systems of the Mark I BWR's, like those in Fukushima.

No nuclear powerplant is safe.

 If we can send robots to Mars, we can surely have one that can get inside the Fukushima plant.

It is too boring to make a robot to go inside the plant!!!! And they can spend more money and get more of a WOW effect if they send one to Mars!!!

Radioactive contaminants in Fukushima have half lives of millions of years..,

I don't think those are the ones we need to worry about.

Nuclear power is not evil. The legacy reactors are intrinsically unsafe, ergo all the expensive safety measures and systems built in, and as Fukushima demonstrated, they can still fail. There are reactor designs that are walk away safe but you can’t get bomb material from them so we’re not developed.

I am all in favour of sustainable power generation but that includes safe nuclear as a base load.

They aren't passing the buck. Technology to handle material this radioactive and store it safely does not yet exist. The radiation degrades robots in very short order.

This is how dangerous nuclear power is, plus all the waste of course. Before they sort these reactors out, climate change may have made securing them impossible. And maintaining the waste in climate change proof conditions for generations will be no picnic.

Other reactors around the world may also have problems as the sea water they use for cooling warms up in hotter summers and politically unstable countries lose the ability to tend their power plants. They may even be used as targets in war.

At Fukushima Daiichi they may eventually have to create an in-situ concrete sarcophagus around the reactors, and hope that, should any humans survive climate change, they don't become too curious about what lies inside Japan's mysterious Nukehenge.

The problem is the radiation frying the the circuits of the robots that get close. The radiation is higher than that on the surface of Mars, which is apparently similar to that of a low earth orbit.....which astronauts can handle

On the bright side of such predictions, they are generally based upon current technology, which as we all know, tends not to stay 'current' for long. No one can anticipate what might be developed prior to 2051 that might help with this challenge.