(Tokyo) The operator of Japan’s stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant announced Friday that it was postponing tests to recover radioactive debris from a reactor hit by the 2011 tsunami.
“The debris removal will not start today (Friday). We will resume after investigating the cause of the problem,” Tatsuya Matoba, spokesman for operator Tepco, told AFP after a very brief first unsuccessful attempt on Thursday morning.
“We do not know yet whether we will be able to resume next week. It depends on the outcome of our investigations into the cause of the problem” discovered on Thursday, he added.
A probe, equipped with a robotic arm, is to be sent inside a failed reactor. It should take about a week to reach the radioactive debris and reappear 4 weeks later with a sample.
Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) is seeking to recover a tiny amount of the 880 tons of radioactive debris believed to be inside the reactors of the nuclear power plant hit by the devastating 2011 tsunami.
The analyzed sample will provide information on the state of the interior of the reactors and the danger of their contents, a crucial step towards the decommissioning of the plant.
The debris has such high radiation levels that Tepco had to develop specialized robots capable of withstanding it to operate inside.
Removing the debris is considered the most daunting challenge in the plant’s decommissioning project. Decontamination and dismantling work is expected to last several decades.
Three of Fukushima’s six reactors were operating when the tsunami struck the plant on March 11, 2011, melting the cooling systems and causing the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
Tepco had sent two mini-drones and a mini-robot, in the shape of a snake, into one of the three seriously damaged reactors at the end of February. But the operation was interrupted for technical reasons.
Japan began releasing water stored at the plant site into the Pacific Ocean in late August 2023, after having been treated to remove most of its radioactive substances, except for tritium, which is only dangerous in high, concentrated doses.
China in particular has strongly criticized the discharge of treated water from the plant into the sea, despite the process having been validated by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and has responded by suspending all imports of Japanese seafood since last summer, followed by Russia a few months later.
The 2011 earthquake and tsunami killed about 18,000 people. The Fukushima nuclear disaster was one of the worst nuclear accidents in history.