TEPCO again halts work to collect fuel debris at crippled Fukushima power plant

TOKYO, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant said Tuesday that the project to extract melted fuel debris from one of the destroyed reactors was suspended due to a camera glitch.

Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) has been unable to receive images from cameras on a device that was supposed to retrieve a small amount of melted fuel from the No. 2 reactor of the plant, bringing a stop to the project, the utility said.

The glitch disabled two of the four cameras attached to the retrieval device, it added.

As the operation has to be conducted remotely due to high radiation levels inside the containment vessel of the No. 2 reactor, images captured by the cameras are essential for extracting the fuel debris.

TEPCO said that work to extend the retrieval device inside the reactor containment vessel and lower a tool on its tip to the bottom of the vessel via a cable was completed by Monday.

TEPCO had planned to grab the first several grams of debris early this week, but it remains unclear when the work will resume as the utility tries to determine the cause and fix the problem.

TEPCO is currently in the decades-long process of decommissioning the power plant, which suffered core meltdowns that released radiation after being hit by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and an ensuing tsunami on March 11, 2011, resulting in a level-7 nuclear accident, the highest on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale.

An estimated 880 tons of fuel debris remain in No. 1, 2, and 3 nuclear reactors stricken during the accident. The experimental removal of the deadly debris was initially planned for 2021 but was postponed three times due to the coronavirus pandemic and technical difficulties.

The operation was finally set to begin on Aug. 22. But the work was halted until Sept. 10 as officials from both TEPCO and contractor Mitsubishi Heavy Industries failed to verify the correct sequence of the pipe setup.