They revealed significant damage to its foundations and a large amount of radioactive debris. They believe it will take decades to decontaminate and dismantle Fukushima.
New images filmed by a robot inside a reactor at the Nuclear Power Plant in Fukushima Daiichiin northeast Japan, devastated by an accident in 2011, revealed significant damage to its foundations and a large amount of radioactive debris.
Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), the operator of the plant that is being dismantled, published on Tuesday some of the images taken inside the reactor number 1, one of the three whose cores melted in 2011 after an earthquake, followed by a tsunami.
“There are areas that we couldn’t see” inside this reactor, but the damage is probably “extensive in many places,” a Tepco official told a news conference.
The video shows chipped concrete walls revealing steel armor and rubble piled two feet high.
Experts believe it will take decades to decontaminate and dismantle Fukushima.
In Reactors 1, 2, and 3, fuel and other materials melted during the disaster and solidified to form highly radioactive debris.
The removal of this waste can only be carried out by remote-controlled robots. But the start of this extremely complex operation has been delayed by the pandemic and technical difficulties.
“Due to the high levels of radiation in the reactors, I understand that robots using semiconductors are not performing as well as expected,” Fukushima Prefectural Governor Masao Uchibori said at a news conference on Monday.
The governor urged Tepco to carry out new seismic tests of the plant out of fear that the situation could worsen if another natural disaster occurs.
Source: Ambito
