Japan: Nuclear Fuel Sample Taken from Former Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant

Nearly two years, over $100 million dollars, and dozens of failed experiments. All of this was necessary to extract a very small piece – 5 millimeters in diameter and weighing less than 3 grams – of molten nuclear fuel from the reactor at Japan’s former Fukushima nuclear power plant, needed to better plan the decommissioning of the nuclear power plant destroyed since the 2011 tsunami after the devastating earthquake.

As reported by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco), which operates the former Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the sample was removed from the reactor No. 2 containment vessel using a remotely operated robotic arm. Previously, numerous similar attempts have failed due to very high levels of radioactivity that disabled the cameras and electronic circuits of the robotic arm.

Akira Ono, the project’s chief engineer, said that “after analyzing the condition of the molten mass of nuclear fuel, including radioactivity, the sample will be isolated into an appropriate container.” According to Engineer Ono, “from the sample, Tepco experts should gain valuable information to better understand what happened in 2011, as well as plan the next steps of the plant’s decommissioning plan, which include, among other things, developing other robots capable of working in the most radioactive areas.”

At the same time, Tepco continues its sharply criticized operation of dumping wastewater used to cool the destroyed reactors into the Pacific Ocean. Tepco and the Japanese government had set a goal of completing the decommissioning of the former Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in a maximum of 40 years, but according to experts quoted by the Japanese press, “they were too optimistic and should revise their projections.” In fact, the collection of the first sample represents only the first step toward developing an operational plan to remove the entire mass of molten nuclear fuel, estimated at more than 900 tons. Another problem still open is where to transport and store all this nuclear fuel.