A Snake River - like automaton and miniskirt drone have guess deep inside the irradiated reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in Japan . As show in their young images , the fair - up operations still have some mode to go 13 year after the catastrophic nuclear nuclear meltdown .
Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings ( TEPCO ) , the electric utility company that operated the plant and runs its decommissioning program , transmit outits latest interior investigationof the Fukushima flora ’s Unit 1 nuclear reactor in March 2024 .
Unit 1 was the epicenter of the disaster when it go intomeltdown on March 11 , 2011 . An earthquake follow by a tsunami flooded its backup source , cutting tycoon to the ticker that continuously douse the reactor core with coolant liquid state . Intense high temperature built up and a full nuclear meltdown eventually occurred , releasing grave amount of radiation into the surrounding environment .
TEPCO are still trying to identify the orange clump-like structures, but they are likely to be melted fuel or equipment.Image credit: TEPCO
In their late step to cleanse up the area , TEPCO send off robotic probes in the intestine of this nuclear reactor to examine the core and its melted nuclear fuel . Their intent is to get wind about the shape of the worn out fuel to facilitate its remotion so the works can be decommission .
It label the first time they ’ve handle to return with ikon from inside the " pedestal " of nuclear reactor Unit 1 .
deeply within Unit 1 , the robots took images of “ icicle - like adhesions ” and “ bunch - like objects ” hang off the wall of the nuclear reactor . These unusual features are likely to be the intersection of fuel or equipment that melted during the topnotch - hot meltdown , but became ready and solid when they later cool down .
Another look inside Unit 1.Image credit: TEPCO
“ Very utile selective information has been obtained , ” a TEPCO official said at a news conference on March 18 , according toThe Asahi Shimbun .
Unit 1 is n’t the only portion of Fukushima that needs to be exculpate up . Meltdownsalso occurredin reactors Unit 2 and Unit 3 . building block 4 was also damage by an detonation from Unit 3 , although there was no fuel in the nuclear reactor at the sentence . It ’s estimated that the three impacted nuclear reactor contain an count on total of 880 net ton of melted fuel debris , all of which TEPCO hopes to remove during their decommissioning efforts .
The decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station has made progress . In 2023 , they finally went before with theircontroversial architectural plan to dump treated waterfrom the Fukushima nuclear disaster into the Pacific Ocean , marking a significant milestone in its clean and jerk up .
However , there have been a considerable number of setbacks . In 2017 , the ruins of Fukushima weredubbed a “ golem graveyard”owing to the number of remote control - master probes that had broken inside the enlighten facility .
TEPCO has said the full decommissioning of the plant will “ require 30 to 40 eld ” , butcritics saythis is naively optimistic .
