Dismantling for good

japan's Atomic Power Corporation will begin dismantling in December 2001 the country's oldest commercial nuclear reactor. The 166,000-kilowatt nuclear reactor, commissioned in 1966, will become the first commercial Japanese nuclear power plant to be dismantled. The cost of scrapping the plant and other related measures, which is expected to take until fiscal 2017-18, is estimated at us $772 million, a spokesperson of the corporation said. He added that about 18,100 tonnes of low-level radioactive waste will be produced from the demolition of the plant. The reactor, located in Tokaimura on the Pacific Coast, ended operations in 1998. It was the only plant in Japan that used graphite as its moderator and carbon dioxide gas as its coolant. Japan's 51 other commercial nuclear reactors use water as their moderator and coolant.