• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

New Images From Inside Fukushima Nuclear Plant Are Causing Big Worries

April 5, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

Robotic probes have dived into the watery ruins of the Fukushima nuclear power plant and revealed that vital supporting structures appear to be damaged. While the discovery is not an immediate concern, it’s feared it could become a major issue if another earthquake rocks the area.

Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) uses remote-controlled probes to explore the submerged depths of the nuclear power plant and keep tabs on how the massively expensive clean-up operation is going. 

Advertisement

According to an update [PDF] released on Tuesday, one of their robots recently took images of the Unit 1 pedestal, a supporting structure under one of the reactor cores that experienced a meltdown during the notorious 2011 nuclear disaster.

Associated Press reports that the 120-centimeter (47-inch) thick concrete wall of the pedestal was showing signs of significant damage at its base, exposing the steel reinforcement inside. 

The concern is that three of the reactors contain an estimated total of 880 tons of highly radioactive melted fuel debris. According to The Asahi Shimbun, TEPCO managed to obtain the first visual confirmation of the melted nuclear fuel in the Unit 1 reactor for the first time just last week.

Robotic images from inside Fukushima nuclear power plant show A deposit, possibly of melted fuel, outside the pedestal.

A deposit, possibly of melted fuel, outside the pedestal. Image credit: TEPCO

The clean-up operation is still challenged with removing the fuel debris. If these support structures break, then it threatens to cause further headaches for TEPCO. 

Advertisement

Reports of the damage prompted the Governor of Fukushima Prefecture, Masao Uchibori, to ask TEPCO to immediately evaluate whether the structure could survive another earthquake, just like the one that prompted the catastrophe. 

The catastrophe occurred on March 11, 2011, when a 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck the east coast of Japan, creating a 15-meter (50-foot) tsunami that killed over 18,000 people along Japan’s northeast coast.

The devastating waves also struck the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, shutting down its power supply and vital cooling systems. This led to a meltdown in three of its reactors and sent significant amounts of radiation into the atmosphere. Considering the scale of the accident, it’s widely considered to be the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.

The recently imaged spent fuel in the reactors is just one part of the problem, however. Following the incident, the plant was flooded with water. This produced around 1.3 million tons of wastewater that are stored in over 1,000 tanks at the site.

Advertisement

After a long and heated debate, TEPCO recently said it was going ahead with plans to dump this treated water into the Pacific Ocean, sparking anger from local fishing communities and neighboring countries. It might sound sketchy, but the proposal is safer than it sounds – and perhaps the only option on the table.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Tennis-Barty storms into third round as U.S. Open mops up
  2. UNICEF calls for schools to reopen in pandemic-hit nations
  3. Evergrande set to miss second offshore bond coupon payment this month, sources say
  4. Porcine Pacifists Help Break Up Fights Between Fellow Pigs

Source Link: New Images From Inside Fukushima Nuclear Plant Are Causing Big Worries

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Alien Abduction Or A Trick Of The Mind? A Down To Earth Explanation Of Close Encounters
  • Six Months Into Trump’s Presidency, Americans Report Record Low Pride In Being American
  • TikToker Unknowingly Handles Extremely Venomous Cone Snail And Lives To Tell The Tale
  • Scientists Sequence Oldest Egyptian DNA To Date, From A Whopping 4,800 Years Ago
  • “Uncharted Waters”: Large Hadron Collider Begins Colliding Oxygen For The First Time
  • 125,000-Year-Old Neanderthal “Fat Factory” Shows They Gorged On Bone Grease
  • On July 3, Earth Will Reach Its Farthest Point From The Sun – 152 Million Kilometers Away
  • NASA’s Perseverance Rover May Have Recorded Evidence Of Electrified Dust Devils On Mars
  • “Hymn to Babylon”: Missing Mesopotamian Text Dating Back Nearly 3,000 Years Discovered
  • Multiple New Species Of Cute Spotty And Stripy Geckos Discovered In Remote Cambodia
  • ChatGPT May Be Surprisingly Good At Piloting Spacecraft, Taking 2nd Place In Spaceflight Competition
  • Incredible Supernova Finding Shows That “Double-Detonation Mechanism” Happens In Nature
  • Soda Cans, Asthma Inhalers, And… Water Bottles? All Things That Could Explode In Your Car This Summer
  • Video: Is There An Ideal Sleeping Position?
  • If You Look Up At The Right Time Today, You Will See A Giant “X” On The Moon
  • We May Have Our Third Interstellar Visitor And It’s Nothing Like The Previous Two
  • Orcas Filmed Kissing (With Tongues) In The Wild For The First Time
  • How Easy Is It For A Country To Change Its Time Zone?
  • Earth’s First Commercial Space Station Set To Launch In 2026
  • Black Hole Moon: Rogue Planets With Weird Signatures Could Be A Sign Of Advanced Alien Life
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version