On August 22, a technical problem prevented the green light to be given to this same test, considered essential to design the plant’s decades-long decommissioning plan, and the operation could not begin until September 10.

Its main objective is to extract small samples from the three reactors that suffered core meltdowns in 2011, after a major earthquake and tsunami, for analysis.

The management company said it was forced to suspend the operation because it was unable to view images from two of the four cameras installed in the recovery device that was inserted inside the vessel of one of the reactors.

TEPCO defended the need for the indefinite pause to try to determine the cause of the problem and fix it.

Several experts believe that reactors one, two and three harbor about 880 tons of debris, as the mixture of melted nuclear fuel with material belonging to the reactor structure is defined in this case.

Radiation levels at the site are extremely high, so removing the debris is considered the most difficult step in the decommissioning of the plant, whose tragedy is seen as one of the worst nuclear accidents in history.

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