TOKYO, Aug 23: The operator of Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant said this week's trial removal of radioactive debris from a battered reactor has been postponed due to a technical issue.
Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) was aiming to remove a tiny sample of the estimated 880 tons of radioactive debris believed to sit inside reactors at the tsunami-hit nuclear plant.
But after carrying out the preliminary steps of the trial retrieval on Thursday morning, a Tepco spokesperson said the operator had "decided to suspend the work".
The trial removal will not resume on Friday as the operator has to "investigate the cause of the trouble," another spokesman Tatsuya Matoba told AFP on Friday.
"We can't exclude the possibility that we resume this Saturday, but personally I've never experienced this kind of operation starting on Saturday or Sunday," he said.
He added that it was also unclear whether the work would resume next week.
"It depends on how deeply we'll investigate," he said.
Three of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant's six reactors were operating when a tsunami hit on March 11, 2011, knocking down cooling systems and sending them into meltdown in what became the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. —AFP
