In a major breakthrough , engineers have say they may have found some of the melted radioactive fuel from one of Fukushima ’s reactors . This is a life-sustaining whole tone towards cleaning up and decommission the plant .
The breakthrough was made by a robot calledLittle Sunfish , which entered the flooded reactor 3 on Friday and ended its delegation on Saturday . This was one of three reactor ( there are six in sum ) that go into nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear works after a deadly tsunami in March 2011 .
At the bottom of the elemental containment vessel , the robot returned images of what wait like fuel dust . These black , lava - like objects are likely nuclear fuel that dripped out through the damaged nuclear reactor . The annunciation was made by the Tokyo Electric Power Company ( TEPCO ) , who are handling the clean - up operation .
“ It ’s instinctive to assume that the debris melted and dropped , ” a TEPCO functionary told reporter , said theJapan Times .
They also quoted Tadashi Narabayashi , a specially appointed professor of nuclear applied science working at Hokkaido University . “ The images that come along to be melted fuel detritus fit those find in the ( 1986 ) Chernobyl crisis , ” he said . “ It ’s decidedly fuel detritus . ”
If corroborate , this will be the first time fuel has been found at nuclear reactor 3 ( also called Unit 3 ) . Some of the fuel is hanging like icicles around the reactor ’s control rods , while other goon may have melted and re - solidified near a wall that supports the atmospheric pressure vessel , call the pedestal .
This location search by Little Sunfish is beneath the core , where fuel is thought to have assemble into a pool and melted through .
It ’s a long , arduous roadfrom here though . engine driver do not await to find all of the melted fuel from the reactors until 2021 . Not until then can the houseclean - up and decommissioning appendage start , which is expected to take four decades at a cost of $ 188 billion .
petty Sunfish will be life-sustaining in hotfoot this along . The pocket-size automaton , just 30 centimetre ( 12 inch ) longsighted and 13 centimeters ( 5 inch ) widely , swam into reactor 3 through a specially drilled kettle of fish . It ’s unclear when or if it will go back into this nuclear reactor , but for now critical progress has been made .
