Japanese utility makes first contact with melted Fukushima fuel

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  Before the nuclear fuel deposits had been touched. [credit: TEPCO ]

Late last week, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) sent a probe into the damaged second reactor at the Fukushima nuclear plant. The probe's mission was to explore the solidity of the nuclear fuel that melted back in 2011, when a tsunami hit the nuclear plant following an earthquake, causing a meltdown of the plant's three reactors.

Eight years later, TEPCO is making slow but steady progress toward decommissioning the three damaged reactors. The mission to touch the melted nuclear fuel with a remote-controlled probe aimed to find out how solid the melted fuel is and whether it could be transported away from the site. This was the first time that field crews had been able to use any device to physically interact with the fuel since the reactor meltdown.

"The observation device made contact with deposits at six locations on the pedestal," TEPCO wrote in a short preliminary report that was published on Friday. "Deposits in five locations could be moved." TEPCO posted a video, which can be found here, of the robotic probe picking up pieces of melted nuclear fuel.

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