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Decommissioning work at the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has suffered a setback after the shape-changing “transformer” robot sent in to search for melted fuel stalled hours into its mission and had to be abandoned.
The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), said the robot stopped moving last Friday during its first inspection of the containment vessel inside reactor No 1, one of the three reactors that suffered meltdown after the plant was struck by an earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
Tepco, which recently conceded that the technology for robots to retrieve the nuclear fuel had yet to be developed, said on Monday it would cut the cables to the stranded robot and postpone a similar inspection using a separate device.
WATCH: Video shot inside the Fukushima reactor by "transformer" robot

<![CDATA[// ><!]]>


1st time "Shape-changing" robot entering Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 PCV. Information obtained from 14 of 18 checkpoints.A big step towards decontamination of Fukushima Daiichi NPS.
Posted by Tokyo Electric Power Company, Incorporated (TEPCO) on Monday, April 13, 2015


 
However, in a glimmer of hope, the stranded robot collected data that indicates a path exists to send other robots deeper into the reactor.
Developed by Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy and the International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning, the robot was supposed to be able to function for about 10 hours even when exposed to radiation at levels that would cause ordinary electronic devices to malfunction.
The “transformer” robot, which can alter its shape depending on its surroundings, was sent in to photograph the inside of the reactor containment vessel and record temperatures and radiation levels.
The 60cm-long, snake-shaped robot entered the containment chamber through a pipe and then transformed into a U-shape crawler after it landed on the platform.
A video compilation of images transmitted by the robot, released Monday by TEPCO, showed steam wafting from inside the dark container, lit by a lamp mounted on the robot, as it slowly manoeuvred around debris that looked like small rocks and metal parts. The images contained numerous white dots believed to be caused by caused by gamma rays.
It had covered 14 of 18 locations when it stalled, about three hours after it began its journey around the vessel, officials said, adding that they had yet to establish the cause of the problem.
More than four years after Fukushima Daiichi suffered the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl a quarter of a century earlier, radiation levels inside reactors Nos 1-3 are still far too high for humans to enter.

Tepco is pinning its hopes on a new generation of remote-controlled robots, the first of which will monitor the state and location of the melted fuel before others remove it from the reactors’ outer containers.
Last year the dangers posed by high radiation forced Tepco and the government to delay the planned start of fuel removal from reactor No 1 by five years, to 2025. Decommissioning Fukushima Daiichi is expected to take at least 40 years and cost tens of billions of dollars.
Dale Klein, a former chairman of the US nuclear regulatory commission who now advises Tepco, said dangerously high radiation inside the three damaged reactors had made extracting the melted cores particularly difficult.
“Radiation levels in these structures is higher, and working inside them is problematic,” Klein said recently. “This is a challenge that has never been faced before in the world, and there will have to be new equipment developed to make that happen.
“There’s an inherent advantage to the technology that exists here in in Japan to develop those new skills and techniques,” given its expertise in robot technology, Klein added. “Those tools and equipment do not exist today, but the fundamental knowledge of robotic, remotely controlled devices will, I think, be sufficient.”
Additional reporting by Associated Press

Shape-changing ‘transformer’ robot trapped inside shattered Fukushima reactor

An image of the robot on its u-shaped configuration in the Fukushima reactor, prior to it becoming stranded last Friday. Photo: Tepco

An image captured by the robot during its time in the reactor. Photo: AFP/Tepco

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