In a Friday-released provisional report, the Japanese government's Atomic Energy Commission said that it will probably take around three decades or so for the decommissioning of the incapacitated reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

It was on March 11 that crisis hit the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant - operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) - after a massive earthquake and tsunami devastated the main cooling functions at the No. 1 plant.

The catastrophe that struck the plant in Fukushima, situated nearly 220 kilometers in Tokyo's northeast, resulted in the melting down of fuel rods, as well as triggered the release of radioactive substances on to the land and into the air and sea.

The logistics of decommissioning of the plant will be ascertained by the commission over different time frames; and a final report based on the findings will be submitted to the government this December.

Meanwhile, other than the commission, Japan also intends setting up a separate panel of international experts for looking into the main reasons that led to the worst nuclear disaster in the world since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

Noting that the situation at the Fukushima plant is far more complex than the procedure at the US' Three Mile Island Unit 2 reactor which damaged its core in a 1979 accident, the commission's report said: "We set a goal to start taking out the core debris within a 10- year period and it is estimated that it would take 30 years or more to finish decommissioning."