Japan's "Long War" to shut down Fukushima

TOKYO: Just months after Quince was deployed to inspect Japan's tsunami-devastated Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, the US$6 million robot got trapped in its dark and winding pathways.

Seventeen months later, the high-tech soldier is still missing in action - a symbol of a daunting decommissioning project that will take decades, require huge injections of human and financial capital and rely on yet-to-be developed technologies.