An attempt to use an extendable robot to remove a fragment of melted fuel from a wrecked reactor at Japan’s tsunami-hit Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant was suspended yesterday due to a technical issue.
The collection of a tiny sample of the debris inside Unit 2 reactor’s primary containment vessel would start the fuel debris removal phase, the most challenging part of the decades-long decommissioning of the plant, at which three reactors were destroyed after a tsunami hit the site following an earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale on March 11, 2011.
The work was stopped when workers noticed that five 1.5m pipes used to maneuver the robot were placed in the wrong order and could not be corrected within the time limit for their radiation exposure, said Tokyo Electric Power Co Holdings (TEPCO), the plant’s operator.
Photo curtesy of TEPCO via AP
The pipes were to be used to push the robot inside and pull it back out when it finished. Once inside the vessel, the robot is operated remotely from a safer location.
The robot can extend up to about 22m to reach its target area to collect a fragment from the surface of the melted fuel mound using a device equipped with tongs that hang from the tip of the robot.
The mission to obtain the fragment and return with it is to last two weeks.
A new start date had not been decided, TEPCO said.
TEPCO president Tomoaki Kobayakawa said the priority was safety rather than rushing the process and that he planned to investigate the cause of the pipe setup problem.
“I understand that the decision was to stop and not push when there was a concern,” Kobayakawa told reporters in Niigata Prefecture, where he visited to discuss another TEPCO-operated nuclear power plant with the local community.
The sample-return mission is the first crucial step of a decades-long decommissioning at the Fukushima Dai-ichi site.
However, its goal to bring back less than 3g of an estimated 880 tonnes of radioactive molten fuel underscores the daunting challenges.
Despite the small amount of the debris sample, it would provide key data to develop decommissioning methods and necessary technology and robots, experts say.
Better understanding of the melted fuel debris is key to decommissioning the three wrecked reactors and the entire plant.
The Japanese government and TEPCO are sticking to a 30-to-40-year cleanup target set soon after the meltdown, despite criticism that it is unrealistic. No specific plans for the full removal of the melted fuel debris or its storage have been decided.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
RSS