A robot that spent months inside the tsunami-ravaged reactor ruins of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant delivered a small sample of melted nuclear fuel on Thursday. Plant officials said it was a step toward beginning the removal of hundreds of tons of melted nuclear fuel. fuel debris.
Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, which manages the power plant, said the rice-grain-sized sample was placed in a secure container and the mission was over. It will be transported to a glove box to be measured for size and weight, and then sent to an outside laboratory for detailed analysis over several months.
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Director Akira Ono said the project will provide important data for planning decommissioning strategies, developing the necessary technology and robots, and understanding the progress of the accident.
The first sample will not be enough and additional small-scale sampling missions will be needed to obtain more data, TEPCO spokesman Kenichi Takahara told reporters Thursday. Takahara said, “It may take some time, but we will steadily work toward decommissioning the reactor.''
Despite multiple investigations conducted in the years since the 2011 disaster that destroyed the. were planted, forcing thousands of nearby residents to leave their homes, but much of the site's highly radioactive interior remains a mystery.
The first samples recovered from inside the reactor were significantly less radioactive than expected. Officials had set limits on what could be removed from the reactor, fearing it would be too radioactive to safely test it, even with heavy protective gear. The sample was well below the limit.
This photo released by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) shows a robot in the upper right cutting out small pieces of gravel that are believed to be melted fuel debris at Unit 2 of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Okuma Town, Fukushima Prefecture. It's in the picture. , October 30, 3024, Northern Japan. (From Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings via AP)
This has raised questions about whether the robots extracted the nuclear fuel they were looking for from areas where previous probes had detected much higher levels of radioactive contamination, but TEPCO officials said the samples were They claim they believe it is molten fuel.
The telescoping robot, called Telesco, began its first mission in August with a two-week round trip plan after its previous mission was postponed from 2021. However, progress was interrupted twice due to accidents, the first time due to an assembly error that took almost all of the time. It took 3 weeks to repair, and the second week was due to camera failure.
Tokyo Electric Power Company announced on October 30 that it had cut a sample weighing less than 3 grams (0.01 ounce) from the surface of a pile of melted fuel debris at the bottom of the primary containment vessel of the Unit 2 reactor.
Three days later, a worker in full protective gear slowly pulled the robot out and it returned to its sealed container.
On Thursday, the gravel, whose radioactivity was recorded earlier this week and was well below the limits set for environmental and health safety, was placed in a secure container for removal outside the plot.
The return of the sample marks the first time that melted fuel has been recovered from the containment vessel.
Fukushima Daiichi lost critical cooling systems in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, causing meltdowns at three of its reactors. Inside is an estimated 880 tons of deadly radioactive fuel.
The government and TEPCO have set a 30-40 year goal to complete the cleanup by 2051, but experts say this goal is too optimistic and should be updated. Some say it will take more than a century.
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Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said that although there were some delays, “the overall decommissioning process will not be affected.''
No concrete plans have been decided for complete fuel debris removal or final disposal.
