Nuclear Debris Discovered

Tokyo Electric Power Company has basically been telling “I don’t know” to the question what is going on in the reactors of First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, which caused severe accident and huge loss of national interest in 2011. Now, the company released new information. TEPCO announced that it found a black lump under the Reactor #2 of the plant. It is supposed to be the debris of nuclear fuel that was melted down. The video footage taken by remote controlled camera showed incredible damage of the nuclear reactor.

It was the first time for TEPCO to directly confirm the situation of nuclear fuel in the plant. The workers for TEPCO was successful in inserting camera attached on a tube through a hole on containment vessel and witnessing the situation under pressure vessel, which was severely broken. The containment vessel was filled with steam eveporated by nuclear fuel that was still hot even six years after the accident.

What did they discovered? There was scaffolding for ordinary maintenance of the reactor, which was covered with melted nuclear fuels looking black and sticky. TEPCO still insists that they do not know what the black lump is, saying “We cannot clearly say about it until we calculate the quantity of radiation there.” What should it be, if it were not nuclear debris? The company only admitted “possibility” of that.

The disclosed situation in broken reactor indicates difficulty of pulling the nuclear fuel out. Human being cannot approach the debris with such a high radiation. Will the equipments be able to survive in the place extremely hot and highly radioactive? Even Chernobyl, the only other nuclear power plant that experienced leak of melted nuclear fuel thirty years ago, has not started the project to remove the debris.

TEPCO is planning to determine the method of removing the debris in 2018 and actually start the project in 2021. But, what they have achieved was realization of situation in the containment vessel of Reactor #2. Reactors #1 and #3 are still untouched. It is still a great concern how to protect the workers from being exposed to radiation, where the debris pulled out of the reactor to be kept, or when and how it to be disposed.

TEPCO is going to dispatch a small investigation robot, named Scorpion, into the reactor for further research. But the video indicated that nuclear fuel was scattered inside the containment vessel. The robot will challenge an unprecedentedly difficult project the world has never tried.