Tepco reveals a robot to be used to retrieve debris at the power plant in Kobe, western Japan. - AP
TOKYO: Japan's Tokyo Electric Power restarted the trial removal of nuclear fuel debris from the Fukushima Daiichi plant, a company official said on Tuesday (Sept 10), after the work was suspended last month due to equipment malfunction.
The preparatory work, the first of its kind since a powerful tsunami destroyed the plant in 2011, was suspended on Aug 22 due to an error in the installation of the extraction equipment, and on Sept 6 Tepco completed re-checks ahead of the restart.
The work to remove debris, which consists of nuclear fuel along with parts of the plant's infrastructure and is estimated to weigh around 880 tonnes, was initially planned to start in 2021, but was delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In August last year, Tepco started to release treated radioactive water from the Fukushima plant, part of the decommissioning process, which resulted in a ban of Japanese seafood imports by China, Japan's top seafood buyer at a time. - Reuters
