The bid to restore safe conditions to the crippled Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant has been hampered by a discovery of searing heat, it has emerged.Cooling systems at the plant were damaged on March 11 after a huge tsunami hit Japan following an earthquake, killing thousands and sparking the most severe nuclear crisis since Chernobyl..
Almost 80,000 people in the surrounding area have been evacuated as plant owners seek to resolve the crisis and the clean-up effort could be delayed after robots found temperatures comparable to a sauna in the second reactor.
A Packbot probe sent in yesterday found temperatures up to 41 degrees Celsius and humidity ranging from 94 to 99 per cent, the Tokyo Electric Power Company said today.
Despite fears over the high temperature, the robot also recorded lower radiation levels than in the damaged No 1 and No 3 reactor buildings.
News of the high temperatures in the plant came as TEPCO began pumping the first of the contaminated liquid from the plant into a special storage tank. Read More
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