French nuclear plant maker Areva said it had agreed with Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) to provide a water treatment plant in a bid to speed up decontamination of the site of Japan's nuclear disaster.
The plant, which uses a process called "co-precipitation", will be delivered by Areva following its radioactive treatment specialists' visit to the nuclear site and consultations with experts from the Japanese power group over the last three weeks, the French company said today.
Areva chief executive Anne Lauvergeon landed in Japan in late March, part of a wider French delegation that flew out to help Tepco bring the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant under control. France is Europe's top generator of nuclear power, from which it gets nearly 80 per cent of its energy needs.
Tepco said over the weekend that it hoped to take an initial step of cooling the reactors and spent fuel at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant within the next three months before bringing it to a cold shutdown within six to nine months.
The Japanese power company has started removing highly contaminated water from one of the reactors, a key step to repair the cooling system.
Areva said other processes could be used in parallel with the co-precipitation treatment plant, which was "the most suited to the present emergency" but could be supplemented by other medium and longer term moves.
Reuters