Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
3/7/2014
PHOENIX, Ariz.—Kurion President John Raymont suggested this week that his company may soon have an increased role in the response to the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. Kurion has been involved in efforts to treat contaminated water at the site since 2011, and appears set to further expand its work at the site. “Kurion’s most well-known [Fukushima project] is the one we delivered in 2011, a large 1200 ton-a-day water processing system that removes cesium,” Raymont told RW Monitor on the sidelines of the 2014 Waste Management Symposia, held here this week. “That still plays an active role on the site, and we expect an expanded role this year in terms of what it does.” Raymont also hinted at further work with its other technology as well. “We also have some other contracts that I can’t really get into at this point and time, although they will become public very shortly, across a range of our technologies. We hope to be able to tell the world what’s going on in the next few months, and they are of significant size,” he said.
Much of the success Kurion has had at Fukushima, Raymont said, comes from the working relationship it has developed with the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). The two companies have been working together since 2011, a time period that has seen many ups and downs in the cleanup. “It’s almost the third anniversary for us going over and visiting,” Raymont said. “It has been a very gratifying experience. TEPCO has been great to work with. They view us as their Western firm because we are still the sole US firm to have a direct contract with them so it’s a unique relationship.” This unique relationship, he said, helps to build up trust between the two companies. “They, like a lot of Japanese firms, work very much on the basis of trust so we work very hard to maintain that,” Raymont said. “Our relationship continues to be very, very strong with them. We keep a very honest and open relationship with each other.”
Kurion Looking for Partners
As Kurion continues its work at Fukushima, the company is also looking to partner with other companies to do more work at the site, Raymont said. “We are looking to work with other interested parties as is appropriate with skills or technology that match up nicely with what we are doing, to see if there are opportunities– American firms and we have also talked to foreign firms too,” Raymont said. “We are looking to serve TEPCO’s needs in terms of delivering the best.” Raymont cautioned, though, that there are cultural differences—differences that may need experienced help to overcome. He mentioned translation problems as well as perception obstacles that take time to learn how to work through. “You generally need to have a partnership with a large player that can help you by wrapping themselves around you to actually deliver your goods,” Raymont said. “You really do have to have an interface circumstance with some other firm.”
Innovative Approach Needed for Cleanup
Meanwhile, the conversation of innovation and new technology needed for the Fukushima cleanup dominated much of the conversation at this week’s meeting. Kazuhiro Suzuki , Executive Director of Japan’s International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning (IRID), gave a keynote speech that focused on IRID’s role in helping to provide innovative approaches to the Fukushima cleanup. IRID, a research body created by Japan to bring together ideas on how best to decommission the Fukushima facility, put out a Request for Information last year asking for suggestions for dealing with some problem issues, including fuel debris removal and spent fuel pool removal. Suzuki said that IRID has received more than 200 responses to its request. Suzuki also told RW Monitor that IRID expects to put out a Request for Proposal sometime this summer to conduct a feasibility study of the ideas it received from this RFI.
From the perspective of what work is actually being done on the Fukushima site, Raymont said that water processing was the main target at this time. “Today, to be honest, their focus is on water management, but by 2020 that goal will be behind them,” Raymont said. “The project will evolve a lot so the skill sets that are relevant today may or may not be relevant in say eight years. It’s important to have the right technology at the right time to have an opportunity. I would say the doors are open for American firms to come in, but they have to come in in a constructive manner that you are going to help somebody do something they could not have done otherwise.”
Fukushima Leading to Faster Innovation
In separate remarks at this week’s meeting, a U.S. Department of Energy official said that the response to the Fukushima incident is help to spur innovation at a faster pace than seen at DOE cleanup projects. “Interesting enough, Japan and its supply chain have built over a short period of a year or two, have developed pretty much from scratch a dozen or more really interesting and useful technology, especially in the robotic field,” said Andrew Szilagyi, director of the DOE Office of Deactivation and Decommissioning/Facility Engineering. “In the DOE, we are more deliberate, slow, and stuck to our timeline, and I think there are some lessons to be learned there. The Fukushima response produced very specific needs, compared to DOE where the needs because of the timeline are generic.” He went on to say that DOE should incorporate some of this vision into its own work so as to be prepared for difficult cleanup approaches with useful technology.
