#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: TEPCO Ready to Remove Huge Truss from Reactor 3 Spent Fuel Pool

These days, it almost feels as if the last sane place remaining in Japan is actually Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, where they have actual jobs to do and they are at it every single day mostly because they have no other choice. (If you are wondering what I'm talking about, read the Anything Goes series.)

TEPCO (or rather, workers at 2nd-tier subcontractors just below the primary subcontractors such as Hitachi and Kajima) has been carefully removing the debris on what was used to be the operating floor of the Reactor 3 building. It says it is ready to remove one of the big trusses sometime in early February, and has released the photographs and diagrams.

From TEPCO's handout for the press, 2/4/2013:

Platforms have been built surrounding the reactor building so that the remote-controlled heavy equipment can operate from the platforms:

In the meantime, according to Mainichi Shinbun, the Japanese prosecutors have seized the testimony that the former Fuku-I plant manager Masao Yoshida gave in closed-door sessions by the Fukushima nuclear accident independent investigation commission set up by the Cabinet Office under the DPJ administration, for the purpose of potentially using the testimony to indict Yoshida and TEPCO. The testimony in the closed sessions was freely given, under the government guarantee that the information obtained would not be used against the person giving the testimony.

Now that it is no longer DPJ government but a new and improved LDP government, that guarantee means squat, and the court that routinely sides with the prosecutors readily grants a warrant of seizure.

Mr. Yoshida, stricken with esophagus cancer and after suffering a stroke last year, hasn't been seen or heard. TEPCO hasn't shared any information about his condition. The Mainichi article says he is in no condition to speak to the prosecutors.

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