Tokyo:Â Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) today began clearing atomic fuel using remote-controlled equipment from inside Fukushima power plant which houses one of the reactors that melted down in 2011.
The operation is deemed delicate and comes four years behind schedule. It also represents the first time the TEPCOÂ has pulled out fuel from inside a highly contaminated building containing the melted-down reactor.
Remote-controlled equipment had to be used since the radiation levels were high and technicians had to haul fuel from a storage pool inside the building.
It has been reported that the process will take two years to remove 566 units of nuclear fuel, most of which are already spent. TEPCO spokeswoman Yuka Matsubara has reportedly stated that Engineers have had to br contend with clearing earthquake debris inside the building and an array of other technical challenges.
However, until 2021, the TEPCO engineers will not attempt to extract molten nuclear fuel that remains deep inside the reactor as it is considered the most difficult part of the massive clean-up operation.
In February, 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.