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Fukushima – Fukushima Governor Masao Uchibori said Tuesday that his Prefecture will accept the decision of the Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc., or Tepco, abandon the Fukushima no 2 nuclear power plant, which is located next to plant No 1, which was crippled in the March 2011 Disaster.

At a meeting with utility President Tomoaki Kobayakawa, the Governor also adopted his plan to build a storage facility on the site to store spent nuclear fuel.

The decision means that all 10 nuclear reactors in the northeastern Prefecture, including six at the Fukushima No 1 plant 12 kilometers from station No 2, will be scrapped, although decommissioning work will take decades.

Tepco’s decision to abandon complex No 2, which is expected to cost about 280 billion euros ($2.6 billion), was formally approved at a meeting of the company’s Board of Directors held on Wednesday.

While the three reactors of the no 1 complex survived accidents in March 2011, the earthquake and tsunami did not cause serious structural damage to the no 2 plant.

“I am grateful that I have received a certain degree of understanding. We will act (by decommissioning) with a new sense of responsibility,” said Kobakov at the meeting with the Governor.

Uchibori and Kobayakawa discussed TEPCO’s plan last week, with the Governor saying that while he welcomed the scrapping of the reactors he needed to consult with cities accepting the repository agreement.

Tepco did not select the final site for spent fuel from complex No 2, raising concerns among local residents that radioactive nuclear waste could be stored on site for a long time.

“The premise is that nuclear fuel will be taken out of the Prefecture. Temporary storage is inevitable at the moment, ” Uchibori said.

He later told reporters TEPCO had assured him the vault would not be permanent.

Currently, plant No 2 has about 10,000 cooling fuel assemblies in the pools.

The scrapping of the no 2 plant also means that the Central government’s annual subsidies of about 1 billion euros for each of the cities of Naraha and Tomioka, which host the facility, will eventually be discontinued.

Revenues related to the nuclear power plant, from property taxes and other forms, accounted for 25 percent of Naraha’s total income and 40 percent of Tomioka’s.

Uchibori said he would ask the government to take into account “the financial situation of the two cities given the special circumstances surrounding decommissioning.”

Japan times LTD. All rights reserved.