Published April 15, 2019, 3:40 PM By Agence
France-Presse
The operator of Japan’s crippled
Fukushima power plant on Monday began removing atomic fuel from inside a
building housing one of the reactors that melted down in 2011.
The withdrawal of nuclear fuel is a
delicate operation for the Tokyo Electric Power Co
The delicate operation represents
the first time the Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) has pulled out fuel from
inside a highly contaminated building containing the melted-down reactor, and
comes four years behind schedule.
Due to high radiation levels,
technicians used remote-controlled equipment to haul fuel from a “storage pool”
inside the building.
Operations were briefly suspended
early Monday afternoon after a problem with the equipment removing the fuel,
but resumed shortly afterwards.
TEPCO estimates it will take two
years to remove 566 units of nuclear fuel, most of which are already spent.
Engineers have had to contend with
clearing earthquake debris inside the building and an array of other technical
challenges, said TEPCO spokeswoman Yuka Matsubara.
“We had to proceed carefully (to
remove debris), and we needed to take measures as dust would waft up and
increase radiation readings,” she told AFP.
TEPCO engineers will not yet attempt
to extract molten nuclear fuel that remains deep inside the mangled reactor.
This is considered the most difficult part of the massive clean-up operation
and is not expected to begin until 2021.
In February, TEPCO sent a
remote-controlled probe to pick up pebble-sized pieces of the melted fuel in a
bid to find out whether the material could be moved.
The next step in that painstaking
process will be to remove some of the fuel as a sample, which is scheduled to
happen by March 2020.
The company also faces other
difficult challenges, including working out how to dispose of large quantities
of contaminated water stored in containers at the plant site.
In the worst nuclear disaster since
Chernobyl in 1986, reactors one, two and three at the Fukushima Daiichi power
plant melted down after a deadly earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in
2011.
The tsunami killed around 18,000
people and caused widespread devastation, and the nuclear meltdown forced the
evacuation of areas near the plant.
Reactors four through six were
offline at the time of the disaster for inspections and did not suffer
meltdowns, though reactor four was damaged by an explosion in the days after
the tsunami.
In December 2014, TEPCO finished
removing all 1,535 units of nuclear fuel kept inside the storage pool at
reactor four.
The company aims to conduct the same
operations for the buildings for reactor one and two by 2023 as part of a
four-decade plan to dismantle the entire Fukushima plant.
Japan’s government has pushed a
reconstruction plan for the surrounding region that includes decontaminating
affected areas and removing topsoil.
This month, an evacuation order was
lifted for part of Okuma, one of two towns where the nuclear plant is located.
But regions affected by the disaster
have struggled to attract back residents who fled in the wake of the meltdown,
with many still concerned about radiation despite government assurances.
No comments:
Post a Comment