Japan, U.S. eye technology to measure melted fuel in Fukushima plant

Japan and the United States have begun joint research on the development of technologies that can measure the amount of uranium and plutonium contained in melted fuel at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, Japanese and U.S. officials involved in the project said Saturday.

Under Japan's safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, Japan is obliged to report to the IAEA the quantity of nuclear substances in the nuclear fuel at power plants to show that none of it is converted for use in arms.

Japan aims to begin monitoring of the substances from the early 2020s in line with the government timetable for scrapping reactors, said the officials from Japan Atomic Energy Agency and U.S. Department of Energy that are chiefly responsible for the project.
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