Robots will begin moving sandbags that were used to absorb radiation-contaminated water after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster as soon as this week, a spokesman for the plant operator said.
TEPCO, the operator of the stricken Japanese power plant, says the bags on underground floors of two buildings have been left untouched following the nuclear accident.
Radiation levels on the sandbags' surface are as high as 4.4 sieverts per hour, which means "humans can die if they approach" them, TEPCO spokesman Tatsuya Matoba told AFP.
Japanese media reports said there were 2,850 bags to be collected, a number which has not been confirmed by TEPCO, which says that they weigh 41.5 tons in total.
Two robots developed to collect the bags, one with a moving claw, were placed on the underground floors last Wednesday, Matoba said.
Workers will use them to "carefully" bring the sandbags out in an operation that TEPCO aims to finish by the end of the 2027 fiscal year.
The bags will then be placed inside containers for radioactive material and kept at a temporary storage site outside the buildings, the spokesman said.
Three of Fukushima's six reactors went into meltdown 14 years ago after a huge tsunami swamped the facility. The tsunami, triggered by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake, left 18,500 people dead or missing.
No one was recorded as having been directly killed by the nuclear accident, which forced evacuations and left parts of the surrounding area uninhabitable.
In addition to contaminated sandbags, around 880 tons of radioactive debris remain in the plant.
Removing this is seen as the most daunting challenge in the decades-long decommissioning project because of the dangerously high radiation levels involved.
A trial removal of nuclear debris from the plant began last year.
© 2025 AFP
15 Comments
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sakurasuki
Japan always bragging about robot at the end, cheap worker that being used for cleanup.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Vietnamese-man-surprised-to-be-driven-to-Fukushima-to-do-cleanup-work
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20210721/p2a/00m/0na/023000c
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It's been more than 10 years and that clean up never finished.
Brian Wheway
How much is the financial so far just to get to this stage? And what is the budget per year for cleaning up the mess?
BigP
It’s TEPCO’s mess but we the tax payers will pay for cleaning it up.
starpunk
Bragging nothing. A radioactive disaster is extremely dangerous. It's far better to have robots handle this kind of work than to risk human lives. If something goes wrong, you just lose a robot.
That's why police are increasingly using robots to detect and possibly defuse bombs. And may I mention drone warfare?
Domo Arigato, Mister Roboto for doing all the jobs that could otherwise get people killed.
OssanAmerica
I really hope Japan is putting more effort into developing practical use robots. Because this kind of accident involving radioactive material is bound to happen again. And while they're at it, robots for military use should be developed as well.
Sven Asai
So it's just an additionally distribution and widespreading of contamination and massive radiation of several Sieverts, outside, on the workers, on the robots and at the containers outside and everything near the building. Makes very much sense, not!
wallace
4.4 sieverts per hour is dangerously high. Complicated to remove 2,850 bags from the basements and place them in dry casks.
Probably to date about ¥25 trillion has been paid out with half of that directly from TEPCO. The final costs in many decades to come will be more like ¥100 trillion. The clean-up will take at least until the end of the century and none of us will ever see it.
wallace
Photos of Fukushima reactor basements.
https://p.potaufeu.asahi.com/ccfa-p/picture/20699912/4caa2a95e955038c7e3e1c6e2d00fbb1.jpg
The robots will tear open the sandbags releasing the zeolite which will be sucked up.
https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/1F-chart-WEB.jpg
1glenn
No one would argue that the meltdown at Fukushima was a good thing, but it may turn out that an occasional nuclear meltdown is preferable to a runaway global warming scenario. If we do nothing, the world in a couple of centuries may be a bleak place due to global warming. Nuclear power may be a necessary part of our energy mix.
The_Beagle
14 years is way too long to just talk about maybe possibly getting started soonish...
grc
‘As soon as this week’. A case study in unintended irony in journalism
kurisupisu
All that radioactive material will be placed in temporary storage containers and then where?
Will it eventually be dumped into the ocean as the Tritium has been?
Japan doesn’t have safe and secure storage facilities for its placement…
wallace
The high level of radiation waste from the sandbags will not be dumped into the ocean. Placed in nuclear fuel waste casks just as spent nuclear fuel is. There is a warehouse on the dock with those casks that were not damaged by the earthquake or tsunami. They will be stored there until the government decides its policy on nuclear waste and builds a nuclear waste facility.
1glenn
A "warehouse on the dock" may not be the best place to guard against the next major tsunami.
wallace
1glennToday 08:39 pm JST
There was no damage from the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. There is no where else until the government builds a safe deposit site. Every nuclear plant has a warehouse with casks.
https://simplyinfo.org/2012/12/the-future-of-fukushima-daiichi-spent-fuel/