Tokyo: The operator of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant said on Monday that the first robot sent inside one of melted reactors stalled before finishing its work but it collected data that indicates a path to send robots deeper into the reactor is intact.
That means a future robot mission may finally reveal the residue of the melted fuel for the first time since the 2011 disaster.
The Tokyo Electric Power Co. Said Monday the robot stalled after completing two-thirds of Friday's planned mission inside the Unit 1 containment vessel.
TEPCO spokesman Teruaki Kobayashi said the robot sufficiently collected temperature, radiation levels and images from parts of the platform just below the reactor core's bottom by the time it got stuck and became unrecoverable.
Kobayashi said the test also showed the robot tolerated radiation and that the radiation levels were significantly lower than anticipated. That means robots can last longer and some wireless device may even be usable, even though the radiation levels were way too high for humans to enter the area, even wearing protective gear.
The data will be used to improve future damage assessments, which are crucial to the safe decommissioning of the plant damaged by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
TEPCO plans to send in a different, amphibious robot next year for further investigation of the three reactors that suffered meltdowns.
Computer simulation and cosmic ray examinations have shown that almost all fuel rods in the Unit 1 reactor have melted, breached the core and fell to the bottom of the containment chamber.
A second robot mission scheduled Monday was postponed as engineers investigated the cause of the robot's stall.
