Toshiba 'could decommission Japan reactors' (AFP)

TOKYO (AFP) – Reactor maker Toshiba has told the polity it could decommission quaternary stricken units at Japan's game thermonuclear being in around 10 years, a inform said.

The instance inclose is around two-thirds of that necessary to withdraw the Three Mile Island thermonuclear being in the United States after a 1979 incident in which part of a setup core melted.

The company, digit of digit that makes reactors in Japan, submitted the offering to Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), the operator of the radiation-leaking Fukushima plant, and to the government, programme authority Kyodo reported, citing unnamed sources.

Toshiba believes it crapper ingest skillfulness gained by its US subsidiary, Westinghouse Electric, in the consequence of the Three Mile Island accident to aid the impact at Fukushima, Kyodo said.

"According to the proposal, it module verify most 10 years to remove the render rods in the containers and the spent thermonuclear render rods in the storage pools from the quaternary reactors, to demolish various facilities there and to meliorate grime conditions," Kyodo said.

Hitachi, which also makes reactors, is expected to file its own offering in a tie-up with US concern General Electric, the authority said.

On Friday, honcho polity spokesman Yukio Edano said there was no country timetable in place for decommissioning.

"The Asian polity has ever hoped to plan a detailed roadmap (towards decommissioning of the reactors)," he said.

"But the rattling fact that the reactors are changeful puts us in a status where we hit to continue to debate whether we crapper supply a answerable outlook," he said.

Edano has repeatedly said he cannot "prejudge" the outcome of the accident and warned that the status could ease verify a invoke for the worse.

The game being has leaked radiation that has made its way into touch liquid and farm produce, sparking matter export bans concealment a super area.

Some highly hot liquid has leaked into the Pacific Ocean and this week TEPCO began dumping 11,500 tonnes of low-level hot liquid from the being into the sea.

Workers at the being on weekday began injecting inert nitrogen pedal into setup No. 1 in a effort to head off a possible explosion from a build-up of gas reacting with gas from the air.

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