IAEA team hails progress in Fukushima clean-up operation

PanARMENIAN.Net - A team from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has praised Japan for making progress in stabilising the Fukushima nuclear plant, BBC News said.

However the team, which has spent 10 days inspecting the plant, also said the process of decommissioning Fukushima is "extremely complicated". It said more needs to be done to deal with the huge amounts of radioactive water generated at the site.

Work began last month to remove fuel rods from a reactor building.

According to the IAEA team, there have been two big improvements at Fukushima since their last visit. Firstly nuclear fuel is now being removed from reactor number four - and put in to safe storage. That process is going well. Secondly the radioactive water at Fukushma is being managed much better than before, and leakage has been reduced.

"The team considers that since our previous mission in April this year, Japan has achieved good progress in improving its strategy and in allocating necessary resources to conduct a safe decommissioning of the Fukushima nuclear power station," team leader Juan Carlos Lentijo said as he delivered the interim report.

"The team considers that the situation remains very complex and that there are still very challenging issues that must be solved for the plant's long-term stability," he said.

The IAEA team reviewed the management of contaminated water that has been used to cool reactor cores, as well as work on removing fuel assemblies from the spent fuel pool in reactor four.