NYT - Japanese Government Says Decommissioning Fukushima Reactors Will Take 40 Years

[kristopher]

1. Notice there is no mention of cost in the NYT piece...

That's because:

TEPCO omits total cost of decommissioning nuclear reactors from work schedule

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the operator of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, did not specify the cost of decommissioning the plant's reactors in its work schedule announced Dec. 21 -- apparently to obscure the possibility of the utility becoming insolvent and no longer viable as a company.

The utility, however, will inevitably come under pressure to process and release accounting information on the snowballing costs of decommissioning the No. 1-4 reactors at the plant, which was crippled in the aftermath of the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.

The government is considering injecting taxpayers' money into the utility and nationalizing it to turn it into an entity dedicated to providing compensation for the nuclear crisis. The government is also poised to launch a full-scale debate on the fate of TEPCO's management with major lenders to the utility.

It is difficult to predict how much it will cost to decommission the four reactors -- a task expected to take up to 40 years and be fraught with difficulties. A government-appointed third-party panel estimated in October that it will cost 1.151 trillion yen to decommission the troubled reactors. TEPCO, meanwhile, has decided to set aside some 940 billion yen for decommissioning.

The utility...
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20111222p2a00m0na019000c.html