The cooling pipes that maintain the underground ice wall designed to prevent groundwater from flowing through the contaminated Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster site are leaking, according to Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings. The leak is not dangerous and has not compromised the ice wall's operations, TEPCO says.

Tokyo Electric Power Holdings' first estimate of the annual amount of radioactive tritium to be removed from the Fukushima nuclear power plant cleanup site puts the volume between 27 trillion and 106 trillion becquerels. TEPCO estimates the radioactive water stored in the tanks at the site contain 860 trillion becquerels.

U.S. company Kurion has signed a contract with Japan's Tokyo Electric Power for the removal of strontium from the roughly 440,900 tons of radioactive water at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. "Strontium is the greatest emitter of radiation impacting site dose-rates," said Kurion founder and President John Raymont, adding that "reducing strontium in tank water stored on-site will significantly improve worker safety and reduces the risk to the surrounding environment." Kurion's technology will be used together with Toshiba's Advanced Liquid Processing System.

The removal of melted nuclear fuel and fuel debris from the first three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan might only begin around 2020, said Tokyo Electric Power. "They have passed the first, most precarious period. Nevertheless, there are various problems and there's no other way but to tackle them one by one," said Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority.

Tokyo Electric Power must create a road map for decommission four Fukushima Daiichi reactors, the Japanese government said. The removal of fuel rods in used-fuel pools should begin within two years, and melted fuel in reactors should be removed within a decade, said Goshi Hosono, the Japanese minister handling the incident. "Full-scale government's involvement will be necessary in the decommission process," Hosono said.