Japan’s Tokyo Electric Power has announced that it will start a demonstration project to remove a small amount of radioactive waste from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, devastated by the 2011 disaster. This experimental removal process will be carried out at the No. 2 reactor on Thursday, Aug. 22, under the approval of final inspections, according to reports at a press conference.
Radioactive waste at Fukushima
This project for TEPCO and the Japanese government is an important step forward in the long and complex path towards the complete decommissioning of the plant. This is a process that is estimated to take three to four decades to complete. Extracting the radioactive debris has proven to be an extremely complicated task, requiring the development of a robotic arm with the ability to remove nuclear fuel, metal cladding and other reactor structures that melted, cooled and solidified after the accident.
According to the International Nuclear Decommissioning Research Institute, approximately 880 tons of fuel debris remains in the three reactors that melted down at Fukushima. The initial demonstration will focus on recovering less than 3 grams of this debris.
The robotic arm will be operated remotely from a control room to the No. 2 reactor, where a metal gripper will descend to extract a small amount of radioactive waste. TEPCO has selected reactor number 2 for this demonstration and plans to apply the same technique to reactors 1 and 3 in the future.
Fukushima cleanup, scene of the worst nuclear disaster since ChernobylChernobyl in 1986, is estimated to cost around 23 billion yen. As part of its decommissioning efforts, TEPCO has also begun the process of controlled release of treated wastewater since last year.
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Source and photo: Tepco
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