TEPCO Starts Looking Inside Reactor at Fukushima No. 1 Plant

January 19, 2018

Fukushima- Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. started on Friday work to learn conditions inside the containment vessel of the meltdown-hit No. 2 reactor at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

In the work, TEPCO plans to take pictures of the bottom of the containment vessel, where part of melted fuel is believed to be located, by inserting stretchable pipes with cameras hung on their tips through two holes found during the previous survey.

It will also try to measure temperature and radiation doses there.

In January last year, the operator of the nuclear plant, crippled by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, photographed lower part of the reactor's pressure vessel, from which nuclear fuel melted down. A self-propelled robot was put inside the containment vessel the following month but failed to locate the fuel debris as the robot went silent.

TEPCO also hopes to figure out how badly the inside of the facility has been damaged and where the debris is.

Based on the findings through the latest work, the company will consider methods to remove the melted fuel.

In July last year, a robot took pictures of something like nuclear debris at the submerged bottom of the containment vessel of the No. 3 reactor, which also suffered core melt. Jiji Press