A worker inside Reactor Unit No. 5, which has a structure similar to Unit No. 2 where fuel debris removal is planned, at the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan in February.
Photographer: Noriko Hayashi/Bloomberg
Japan’s Fukushima Clean-Up Offers a Blueprint for Nuclear Recovery
A breakthrough at the plant devastated in 2011 is testing a new approach to shutting down atomic reactors.
Fifteen years ago this week, Japan faced the biggest nuclear meltdown since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. While Soviet authorities entombed that plant in concrete, Tokyo decided on a very different approach — the Fukushima Dai-ichi facility would be entirely dismantled.
The tsunami-devastated plant is taking a pioneering approach to the critical next phase of the world’s most complex clean-up operation. If successful, it could become a blueprint for the global industry.