How to Tear Down a Nuclear Power Plant

From Scientific American:

Twenty-five years after the tragic runaway fission and fire at Chernobyl , tons of concrete shield workers and visitors from the dangerously radioactive puddle of melted fuel that lurks in the basement of the building housing reactor No. 4. Similarly, more than 30 years after the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, concrete shaved 2.5 centimeters deep guards a hollow reactor vessel, its partially melted down fuel rods having been taken out over the course of a decade and shipped to Idaho National Laboratory (INL) for study. And now, nearly two months after the serial partial meltdowns in the reactors and spent-fuel pools at Fukushima Daiichi , Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has announced at least nine months of work to control the nuclear accident--the initial part of a cleanup that could last for decades.

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