Japan's nuclear regulators have approved a plan drafted by Tokyo Electric Power Company to decommission all four reactors at the Fukushima Daini nuclear plant.

On Wednesday, the Nuclear Regulation Authority gave the go-ahead to the plan TEPCO submitted last May.

It says the decommissioning process is expected to take 44 years. Approximately 10,000 nuclear fuel units in the pools for spent fuel will be extracted over a 22-year period, and handed over to reprocessing firms for recycling.

TEPCO will also build a dry storage facility where some of the fuel will be stored in metal containers.

The plan states that the decommissioning will generate about 50,000 tons of radioactive waste, and estimates the entire cost to be more than 2.5 billion dollars, excluding the cost of nuclear fuel disposal.

The Fukushima Daini plant is located about 12 kilometers south of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant.

TEPCO announced in 2019 the reactors at Fukushima Daini will be scrapped, in accordance with the wishes of Fukushima Prefecture and others.

The plant operator will work to win local support for the plan before deciding when to begin the process.