MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 22nd August, 2018) Subsidiaries of Russian state-owned nuclear corporation Rosatom have successfully completed the first phase of a project to study the aging properties of fuel debris at the damaged Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plant (NPP) in Japan, Tenex, one of the subsidiaries, said in a press release on Wednesday.
"TENEX in a consortium with V.G. Khlopin Radium Institute (KRI), Research Institute of Atomic Reactors (RIAR) and FSUE RosRAO have successfully fulfilled the first phase of works on the research project of the ageing properties of fuel debris. The project is subsidized by the Japanese government; its results will be used in the further works of post-accident clean-up at Fukushima Daiichi NPP," the press release said.
According to the press release, during the project's first phase, experts learned how to develop "model active samples" of the NPP's fuel debris, something that will become useful when eliminating the Fukushima accident's consequences.
"During the second phase, it is planned to produce the model samples of fuel debris necessary for further research, and to develop an ageing model describing the change of its properties over time," the press release added.
In March 2011, a 9.0-magnitude offshore earthquake triggered a tsunami that hit Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant, leading to the leakage of radioactive materials and shutdown of the plant. The accident is considered to be the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986 in then Soviet Ukraine.
