When the accident occurred at Unit 1 of the Tokyo Electric Power Company's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in 2011, a part of the emergency cooling system that was said to have been unable to operate properly due to a lack of understanding by the operators, leading to a delay in response, was removed. Work to remove it has begun.
The removal work began with the piping at the exhaust port of the emergency cooling device called the "isolation condenser" installed at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Unit 1, commonly known as "isocon".
There is a plan to install a large cover that covers the entire building along with the decommissioning work, and since the pipes protruding outside the outer wall will become an obstacle, they will be removed from the morning of the 28th by remotely operating a cutting device suspended by a crane. We are.
"Isocon" is an important piece of equipment that automatically starts up when the pressure in the reactor increases and can cool the reactor even if the power supply is lost. .
However, at the time of the accident, the power station personnel had no experience of moving the isocon, and they thought it was moving when they saw misty steam coming out of the exhaust port. It is considered to be one of the factors that led to the meltdown.
Regarding this, the government's accident investigation and verification committee points out that the lack of understanding of the equipment led to the delay in response.
The removal work is scheduled to be carried out until the 29th, and TEPCO is planning to store the removed pipes in another location at the power station and consider whether it can be used for accident verification.