Japanese engineers yesterday began a difficult operation to remove a second sample of radioactive debris from inside the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.
About 880 tonnes of hazardous material are inside the site after a catastrophic tsunami caused by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake triggered one of history’s worst nuclear accidents in 2011.
Removing the debris is seen as the most daunting challenge in a decades-long decommissioning project because of the dangerously high radiation levels.
Photo: AP
“At 10:03am, the second trial extraction operation was started,” operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said in a statement.
The second removal comes after TEPCO completed the first trial removal operation using a specially developed extendible device in November last year.
The sample weighing just below 0.7g — equivalent to about one raisin — was delivered to a research laboratory near Tokyo for analysis, but TEPCO needs more data to examine methods for full-scale debris extractions.
The company in December last year said that it was “upgrading” the telescopic device used for the first experiment by attaching a new camera to its tip.
Three of Fukushima Dai-ichi’s six reactors went into meltdown in 2011 after the huge tsunami swamped the facility.
Robots last month began moving sandbags that were used to absorb radiation-contaminated water on underground floors of two buildings at the site.
Japan in 2023 began releasing into the Pacific Ocean some of the 540 Olympic swimming pools of treated wastewater, which has been endorsed by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
China banned Japanese seafood imports as a result, and Russia later followed suit.
China earlier this month said that it found no abnormalities in seawater and marine life samples that it independently collected near the nuclear power plant in February, but Beijing indicated that more tests would be needed before it lifts the ban.
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