TOKYO (AP) — A long robot entered a damaged reactor at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant on Tuesday, beginning a two-week, high-stakes mission to...
TOKYO — A long robot entered a damaged reactor at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant on Tuesday, beginning a two-week, high-stakes mission to retrieve for the first time a tiny amount of melted fuel debris from the bottom.is a crucial initial step for what comes next — a daunting, decades-long process to decommission the plant and deal with large amounts of highly radioactive melted fuel inside three reactors that were damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
The robot will then back out to the place it entered the reactor, a roundtrip journey that will take about two weeks. An understanding of the melted fuel debris is essential to determine how best to remove it, store it and dispose of it, according to the Japan Atomic Energy Agency. For this mission, the robot’s small tong can only reach the upper surface of the debris. The pace of the work is expected to pick up in the future as more experience is gained and robots with additional capabilities are developed.TEPCO will have to “probe down into the debris pile, which is over a meter thick, so you have to go down and see what’s inside,” Barrett said, noting that at Three Mile Island, the debris on the surface was very different from the material deeper inside.
Others are pushing for an entombment of the plant, as at Chernobyl after its 1986 explosion, to reduce radiation levels and risks for plant workers.“You’re in a high seismic area, you’re in a high-water area, and there are a lot of unknowns in those buildings,” he said. “I don’t think you can just entomb it and wait.”Morning bid:China gloom overshadows Wall Street-led rebound
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