[A] Japanese nuclear expert has praised workers at Sellafield for making progress with the site’s clean-up.
Naohiro Masuda is responsible for one of the most difficult nuclear decommissioning challenges in the world.
He is President and Chief Decommissioning Officer for TEPCO FDEC, (Fukushima Daiichi Decontamination and Decommissioning Engineering Company), the company charged with the painstaking task of cleaning up the tsunami-stricken Fukushima Daiichi site in Japan
He visited west Cumbria and was impressed with the decommissioning progress made at Sellafield since his last visit in 2014, when the two companies signed an agreement to exchange knowledge and expertise.
Mr Masuda and members of his team visited the National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) before going into one of the highest hazard areas of the site.
Head of external affairs for Sellafield Ltd, Roger Cowton, led the visit, he said: “It was a pleasure to welcome Mr Masuda-san to Sellafield, as we’ve made significant progress since he last came to the site.
“He was impressed with the work being done in the Magnox Swarf Storage Silo, one of the oldest nuclear legacy stores currently being cleaned-up, and was interested to hear about the innovations being developed and pioneered by our local supply chain.”
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility was devastated by a tsunami in 2011, and is now in the process of being decommissioned.
Over the past six years experts from Sellafield and Fukushima have been exchanging knowledge, experience and skills on an on-going basis to ultimately help decommission both sites as quickly and safely as possible.
Although there is much more work to be done, the progress Fukushima to date indicates that the arrangement is beneficial, with experts from West Cumbria actively contributing to the clean-up.
Roger added: “TEPCO wants to continue to access the skills and expertise that exists in West Cumbria, so this visit was an important update for them.”
“We are also learning from some of the great things they are doing in Fukushima, and the sheer scale of their task highlights why we must continue to work together to deliver our respective missions.”
Many comparisons have been drawn not just between the two sites, but their surrounding communities, and there is a desire by both parties to strengthen those community links.
Sellafield Ltd experts and community representatives have also spent time in Japan, at the facility and surrounding area, seeing first hand a decontamination effort of unprecedented scale, while providing advice and technical expertise on environmental management, and radiation protection and stakeholder engagement.
Their Japanese counterparts are already implementing some of the environmental practices and technical innovations used at the Sellafield site.
