Tepco's unshakable belief in its ability to complete the decommissioning operation rules out any meaningful co-operation, even with Japanese government officials.
Even now, at the start of a decommissioning operation that is expected to last 40 years, the plant faces a shortage of workers qualified to manage the dangerous work that lies ahead.
But this apparent spirit of openness is unlikely to turn the decommissioning operation into a genuinely international effort, said Ian Fairlie, a London-based independent consultant on radioactivity in the environment.
The decommissioning operation at Zion, which began on Sept. 1, will skip one of the slowest, dirtiest and most costly parts of tearing down a nuclear plant: separating radioactive materials, which must go to a licensed dump, from nonradioactive materials, which can go to an ordinary industrial landfill.
While workers at the plant struggle to contain thousands of tonnes of radioactive water and begin a decommissioning operation expected to last decades, the government earlier this month lifted evacuation orders in three locations just outside the 12-mile no-go zone.
The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power [Tepco], is supposed to pay back government loans to fund the cleanup, but has balked at the huge expense while it focuses on a costly decommissioning operation at Fukushima Daiichi that is expected to last at least 30 years.
In the US, which has the largest nuclear fleet, we are at the top table for decommissioning, site operations, major projects and consultancy.
However on the longer time-scale, of interest in possible recycling operations, decommissioning and waste management, SiC/SiC appears to perform no better than vanadium alloy or low-activation martensitic steel, due in part to the activation of impurities in a realistic composition.
