Blaming equipment problems, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Friday it will fail to meet its commitment to processing all of the highly radioactive water stored at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant by the end of March.
When Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the plant in September 2013, Tepco President Naomi Hirose pledged that the utility would filter all of the water kept in tanks by this March 31, but the process has been delayed by problems getting it water-filtering apparatus to work.
Around 280,000 tons of the toxic water is sitting in hundreds of leaky tanks at the wrecked plant, with another 350 tons being added every day from the makeshift cooling apparatus set up for the three reactors tipped into meltdowns by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.