Japan doubles cost estimate for cleanup

Associated Press

TOKYO

The estimated cost of cleaning up Japan’s wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant has doubled to nearly $190 billion, with decommissioning expenses expected to continue to increase, a government panel said Friday.

The estimate raises the decommissioning part of the total costs to $70 billion from the current $17.5 billion because of surging labor and construction expenses. Panel officials said the numbers could still grow as experts learn more about the damage to the plant’s reactors and determine fuel removal methods.

Costs for compensation, decontamination of the area and waste storage have also grown significantly.

The plant suffered multiple meltdowns following a massive March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Officials say its decommissioning will take several decades.

Rising cost estimates mean an increased burden on consumers.

Kunio Ito, a Hitotsubashi University professor of commerce who heads the panel, said it is inevitable that the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO, will pass on to customers part of the costs.

He said the estimate for decommissioning is sketchy, but is needed to show the public how much the national project will roughly cost. The estimated increase of $53 billion is modeled after the example of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant cleanup in Pennsylvania following its 1979 partial meltdown.

The TMI cleanup took five years and nearly $1 billion to remove 136 tons of melted fuel from one reactor. The Fukushima plant has twice as much melted fuel in each of three damaged reactors.