Picture: TEPCO prepares to recycle nuclear fuel residue from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant on the 9th. \AFP

[Ta Kung Pao News]According to Kyodo News Agency, 13 years after the major nuclear leakage accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan, Tokyo Electric Power Company finally launched a trial extraction of nuclear fuel residues, which was delayed by about three years than originally planned. The operation is expected to take two weeks and will remove and recover less than 3 grams of nuclear fuel residue.

On the morning of the 10th, TEPCO began relevant preparations. Subsequently, the telescopic tubular extraction machinery passed through the “isolation flap” at the front end of the small opening that connects the containment vessel of the No. 2 reactor to the outside world to block radioactive materials, and tried to use claw-like instruments to grab and recover the nuclear fuel residue. There are 880 tons of nuclear fuel residue left in Units 1 to 3 of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. The start of trial extraction marks the final third stage of the reactor scrapping project of the nuclear power plant.

The Japanese authorities initially planned to use a folding robot arm to begin extracting nuclear fuel residues in 2021. However, due to the long time required to develop equipment and improve the robot arm, the construction plan was postponed many times. In October 2023, when the cover of the small opening connecting the containment vessel of the No. 2 reactor to the outside world was opened, it was discovered that the pipe that could originally reach the bottom of the reactor from the outside was blocked by accumulation. While TEPCO was trying to use low-pressure water to remove the accumulation, it also considered replacing the robot arm with a more flexible telescopic pipe extraction machine, which caused another delay in the construction schedule. On August 22 this year, TEPCO was ready to start construction, but the pipe connection sequence of the push device was wrong, and the extraction of nuclear fuel residue was delayed again.

After the “3.11” earthquake in 2011, a leak occurred at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. Tepco continued to inject water into the reactor containment to cool the core. The recovered cooling water was nuclear sewage containing a variety of radioactive substances. Until Japan completes the recovery of nuclear fuel residues, nuclear wastewater will continue to be produced.