Japan will use robots to remove melted fuel in Fukushima

Robots equipped with pincers and using telescopic tubes to move will collect molten fuel debris weighing less than 3g .

Robot used to remove molten fuel debris in Fukushima. (Photo: Kyodo News).

The company that operates the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant announced on May 28 plans to use remote-controlled robots to collect molten fuel debris from one of three destroyed reactors later this year. , for the first time since the 2011 disaster, according to Yahoo. Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) will deploy an expandable tube robot at the plant's No. 2 reactor to test removing debris from the main containment chamber in October this year. That operation took place more than two years behind schedule. Removal of the melted fuel was scheduled to begin at the end of 2021 but faced many delays, showing the difficulty of the recovery effort after the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

During a demonstration at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries shipyard in Kobe, western Japan, where the robot was developed, a pincer-mounted device slowly lowered from a telescopic tube into a block of gravel and picked up a small particle. TEPCO plans to collect debris smaller than 3 g in testing at the Fukushima plant.

"We believe the fuel debris removal test from reactor No. 2 is an extremely important step toward future decommissioning operations," said Yusuke Nakagawa, fuel debris collection program manager. at TEPCO, share. "It is important to conduct safe and stable testing."

About 880 tons of highly radioactive molten nuclear fuel were inside the three destroyed reactors. Experts believe that the Japanese government and TEPCO's 30-40 year cleanup target for the Fukushima Daiichi plant is overly optimistic. Damage varies from reactor to reactor and plans must be tailored to their conditions. A closer look at the melted fuel debris inside the reactor is key to decommissioning. TEPCO deployed four small drones into the containment chamber of reactor No. 1 earlier this year to take pictures of areas inaccessible to robots.