Feb 09 (Japan Today) - A remote-controlled robot on Tuesday was used to probe the hardest-hit nuclear reactor at Japan's wrecked Fukushima plant, as officials push forward with clean-up operations that have been mired in delays and controversy.
An earthquake and tsunami in 2011 unleashed a disastrous meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi's three reactors that partly sunk their radioactive cores into the plant's concrete foundations, making removal extremely difficult.
The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, said the submersible robot was sent into Unit 1's primary containment vessel to install a guiding path for five subsequent robots, which will attempt to asses and take samples of the melted fuel that emits fatally high radiation.
Tuesday's probe followed five years after the operators sent another robot into the same and badly-damaged reactor, but failed to get any images of the melted fuel.
The robot-led work, which was postponed from mid-January due to mechanical glitches, is expected to last for a few days before full-fledged probes begin.
Earlier probes showed that the fuel at Unit 1 is submerged by highly radioactive water as deep as 2 meters. ...continue reading
