Fukushima Unit 3 Spent Fuel Damage Identified

TEPCO has identified twelve fuel assemblies with damaged lifting handles. Further damage can not be identified at this point as the assemblies are still in the fuel racks in the spent fuel pool. The location of the newer 6 damaged assemblies are from the location where the fuel handling crane and a concrete hatch fell into the pool.

One of the damaged assemblies found in 2015 has more severe damage than the newer group. This assembly has a damaged channel box. This may make eventual removal problematic.

TEPCO plans to eventually remove the fine debris around this fuel assembly, then attempt to confirm the condition of the rest of it. TEPCO is working on a plan for eventually moving these damaged assemblies to the common pool. This will require a custom basket to hold the fuel in the transport cask and a shielded section for storage in the common pool. Even with these additional problems TEPCO still plans to have all of the spent fuel removed from the unit 3 spent fuel pool by the end of fiscal 2020.

TEPCO report in Japanese
https://www4.tepco.co.jp/decommission/information/committee/roadmap_progress/pdf/2019/d191128_07-j.pdf
TEPCO report in English (machine translated)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/za0yxaty6bgxm73/roadmap%20spent%20fuel%20d191128_07-translated.pdf?dl=0

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