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Six Years After Fukushima, A Robot May Have Finally Located the Reactor’s Long-Lost Nuclear Fuel

For the first time since the disaster, we have a picture of what happened to Fukushima’s missing uranium.

Six Years After Fukushima, A Robot May Have Finally Located the Reactor’s Long-Lost Nuclear Fuel
A Toshiba engineer watches a small robot with two CCD cameras developed by Toshiba Corporation and the International Research Institute for nuclear Decommissioning (IRID) moving during its press preview at a Toshiba factory in Yokohama on June 30, 2015. (TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP/Getty Images)

A robot swimming through a decrepit Fukushima reactor has captured images of what might be solidified uranium — the first images of radioactive fuel since the disaster that crippled the plant six years ago.

In March 2011, a massive tsunami triggered a meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, causing the cores of three nuclear reactors to overheat and melt, pouring out red-hot liquid uranium. This melted fuel burned through layers of concrete and steel before settling 20 feet below the radioactive water that flooded the reactors.

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