In the fall of last year we met which a new robot was going to enter at the damaged nuclear reactors at Fukushima to gather more information and assist in the decommissioning of the nuclear power plant.
Today we have some discouraging news, as the robots sent to find radioactive fuel at the Fukushima nuclear reactors they have "died." An underground "ice die" is the idea to stop groundwater from becoming polluted and has yet to be finished. Authorities do not know how to manage the highly radioactive water stored in a number of tanks around the site.
Five years ago, one of the worst earthquakes in history raised a tsunami in the ocean 10 meters high It collided with the nuclear power plant causing multiple nuclear accidents. About 19.000 people died and 160.000 lost their homes and neighborhoods.
Today, as we were talking a few days ago, radiation at the Fukushima plant is still so powerful that it has been impossible to get inside to find and remove the dangerous melted fuel rods.
Tepco (Tokyo Electric Power Co), which operates the plant, has made some progress, such as removal of hundreds of fuel rods in one of the damaged buildings. But the technology needed to establish the location of the melted fuel rods in the other three reactors at the plant has not yet been developed.
No one knows where they are and it is the most dangerous part of the plant for humans, which is why Tepco has developed robots, which can swim underwater and avoid certain obstacles in damaged tunnels.
The problem is that as they approach the reactors, radiation destroys their wiring and "kills" them turning them into useless objects. It takes two years to develop a single robot for each of the plants.
And the other serious problem is that reactors continue to "bleed" radiation to groundwater and at the same time to the Pacific Ocean. This has been the case for 5 years and has no momentary solution. Although what has been achieved is that the leaks have ended since a wall was built around the coastline near where the reactors are.
They do not say that the leaks have completely ceased but they have been considerably reduced. Let's hope it is like that.