Leading Japanese media say the Tokyo Electric Power Company(TEPCO) has begun dismantling tanks used to store treated water at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

According to Kyodo News and NHK on Friday, it is the first such move since Japan began discharging wastewater from the damaged nuclear power plant into the ocean in August 2023. 

Each of the tanks, which measure some nine meters in diameter and roughly 12 meters in height, can hold 700 tons of water. 

After dismantling the tanks, TEPCO plans to set up facilities that will remove nuclear fuel debris from the power plant on the spot that used to house the tanks. 

Of the roughly one-thousand treated water tanks at the site, TEPCO plans to initially dismantle 21 tanks.

Concerns have emerged that this process could create radioactive dust.
 
The tanks at the Fukushima site were estimated to hold nearly one-point-three million tons of treated water as of February 6.