TEPCO Completes Trial Removal of N-Fuel Debris

Tokyo, Nov. 7 (Jiji Press)--Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. said Thursday that it has completed the trial removal of nuclear fuel debris from one of the three meltdown-hit reactors at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan.

A road map drawn up by the government and TEPCO shows that the project to decommission all reactors at the crippled plant has now entered the final phase, which is scheduled to end by 2051.

In the two-month trial from September, a 5-millimeter fragment of fuel debris was taken from the No. 2 reactor containment vessel's bottom on Oct. 30 by a fishing rod-shaped remote-controlled device. The device was moved out of the containment vessel while holding the fragment on Saturday.

On Thursday, TEPCO placed the tiny debris piece in a special container for transport after confirming that its radiation dose was low enough for carrying out the operation. The work started around 9 a.m. and ended about two and a half hours later.

A fuel debris sample was collected from a reactor containment vessel for the first time since the plant suffered the triple meltdown following the massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]