Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (Tepco) started extracting a small amount of radioactive debris from a reactor at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant on Tuesday — a small but key step in its decommissioning of the facility crippled by a triple meltdown in March 2011.
The removal of even a small amount of melted nuclear fuel has taken Tepco more than 13 years, which shows how challenging the task is.
Tuesday’s trial removal process follows an earlier attempt on Aug. 22 that was suspended due to technical issues. The operation, which began at around 7:20 a.m., was aborted three weeks ago after it was discovered that five pipes attached to the debris retrieval device had been installed incorrectly.
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