Plan submitted for Japanese reactors

TOKYO, April 8 (UPI) -- Toshiba Corp. has submitted a plan to dismantle four damaged Japanese nuclear reactors in a decade, industry sources told Kyodo Friday.

Kyodo News Service, citing sources, said Toshiba's proposal calls on expertise from Westinghouse Electric Corp. and other U.S. companies involved in the decommissioning of the reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. That reactor took 14 years to dismantle.

Hitachi Ltd., the other Japanese nuclear reactor company, is expected to submit its own plan for the Fukushima nuclear reactors, working with General Electric Co. Toshiba submitted its plan to Tokyo Electric Power Co. and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

The reactors were damaged in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the government is not yet able to put forth a detailed "road map" of the steps to be taken.

U.S. officials said the threat of a total meltdown at Fukushima appears to have passed. They said any overheating at the plant since it was hit by the 9-magnitude March 11 earthquake and tsunami doesn't seem to have caused the melting of the reactor vessels or their containment structures, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.

Based on that assessment, given the Times on background, TEPCO workers should be able to check any additional damage to the reactors, the report said.

"We are a long way from a point where anybody would say this is stable," a senior administration official told the newspaper. "But it is not a runaway. For a long time, we will be at a declining level of risk."

The administration assessment comes days after a confidential March 26 assessment by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, obtained by The New York Times. That document, based on the assessment of U.S. engineers sent to Japan to help with the crisis, said the Fukushima plant could face a number of new threats, some of which may continue indefinitely.

While it may still take years to repair the damage already done at the plant, the Los Angeles Times said there is currently no heavy radionuclide contamination around the plant, which experts said may indicate the heavy fission products such as strontium and technetium may have vaporized.