TOKYO -- A remote survey of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant's No. 1 reactor was unable to locate and photograph melted nuclear fuel, Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings said Thursday, complicating efforts to remove that material as part of an extensive cleanup.

Tepco on Saturday sent a robot equipped with a camera into the containment vessel for the No. 1 unit. The majority of fuel rods have melted through the unit's pressure vessel since the plant was struck by the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami. The prevailing view has been that those melted fuel rods are now sitting under 2.5m of water at the bottom of the containment vessel.

The plan was to explore the bottom section by dipping a camera into the pool of water for the first time. But unexpected barriers such as pipes kept the camera around 1 meter from the bottom in most of the 10 positions surveyed instead of the intended depth of about 40cm from the bottom. While the camera was able to capture sand-like sediment, there was no trace of the melted fuel rods. Adding a fifth day to the investigation turned up no further evidence.

Yuichi Okamura, acting general manager of Tepco's onsite nuclear power division, offered few comments at the utility's Thursday news conference, saying only that "photographs and radiation data will need to be evaluated in conjunction with one another."

The timeline set by Tepco and the government for decommissioning the Fukushima plant aims to begin extraction of melted-down material from the No. 1, No. 2 or No. 3 reactor in 2021 or earlier. An extraction plan is to be decided this summer. But the fact that the status of the melted rods still remains unknown underscores the seriousness of the accident.

The results of the robot survey were "limited," according to Masanori Naitoh, director of nuclear safety analysis at the Institute of Applied Energy's Nuclear Power Engineering Center. "It would be difficult to set a plan for extraction based on the information from this survey alone."

An investigation of the No. 2 reactor also fell short, with the survey robot unable to reach the targeted spot right under the unit's pressure vessel.

(Nikkei)