Tokyo, 6 September, /AJMEDIA/
The operator of the disaster-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex said Thursday it may resume next week an operation, suspended last month due to an error, to retrieve a small amount of melted fuel from a reactor.
Officials of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc said at a press conference that the erroneous placement of pipes used in the fuel debris extraction work involving contractors occurred because no one from TEPCO oversaw the preparation process to ensure the pipes were connected in the correct order.
The pipes look similar and can be difficult to distinguish for workers wearing protective gear in the high radiation environment, they said.
TEPCO said it will take several days to prepare and recommence the operation.
The utility plans to connect five pipes, each 1.5 meters long, and use them to insert a retrieval device in the No. 2 reactor’s containment vessel to collect a debris sample.
Akira Ono, chief decommissioning officer at TEPCO, said the assembly of the pipes should not have been left to the contractors without TEPCO officials directly monitoring the procedure.
TEPCO President Tomoaki Kobayakawa on Wednesday reported to Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Ken Saito that inadequate management, including confirmation of basic procedures, led to the error.
Saito demanded that TEPCO directly confirm the details of the procedures from the preparatory stage.
Retrieving melted fuel is regarded as one of the most challenging tasks in the decades-long decommissioning plan for the Fukushima Daiichi complex, which was damaged following a massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
An estimated 880 tons of fuel debris remains in the Nos. 1, 2 and 3 reactors, which suffered core meltdowns after their cooling systems failed due to a power outage during the disaster.
