MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th December, 2020) The Japanese government announced Thursday that the removal of melted fuel from one of the damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant would be postponed for at least a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, the pandemic has undermined the development of a robotic arm for fuel removal in the plant's second reactor.
"We will put safety first and make efforts to ensure that the delay of the process will be limited to around a year," a ministry official told journalists, as quoted by the Kyodo news agency.
The official added that the robotic arm would be delivered to Japan sometime around April for further development.
In 2011, the nuclear facility was heavily damaged after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake in the Pacific Ocean triggered a massive tsunami that hit the plant and caused three nuclear reactors to melt down. The plant's decommissioning is still underway.
