Published: June 10th, 2013 at 11:38 am ET  By ENENews 

[...] TEPCO acknowledges that the exact path to decommissioning remains unclear because an assessment of the state of the melted reactor cores has not yet been carried out. [...]

The process of permanently shutting down the plant hasn’t gotten started yet and the work up to now has been one makeshift measure after another to keep the reactors from deteriorating. [...]

“We’re headed toward a real crisis,” said Ryuichi Kino, a freelance writer and photographer who has authored books about the nuclear disaster and has reported on TEPCO intensively since March 2011. [...]

[Former Fukushima Daiichi worker] Happy-san has the same fear. Some of the recent workers, rounded up by the lesser contractors, appear uneducated and can’t read well, he said. [...]

Happy-san still remembers the huge blast that went off when one of the reactors exploded, and rubble was showering from the sky for what felt like an eternity.

“We had opened the Pandora’s box. After all the evil comes out, then hope might be sitting there, at the bottom of the box, and someday we can be happy, even though that may not come during my lifetime,” he said.

See also from today: Japan eyes earlier start of melted fuel removal at Fukushima plant (“But prospects are unclear because technology must be developed to perform the work”)