Water falling like rain inside N-reactor

The Yomiuri Shimbun

Tokyo Electric Power Co. on Friday released 30 minutes of video footage taken Thursday inside the containment vessel of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant's No. 2 reactor, the first such images to be released by the utility.

Drops of water fall like rain in the video, which was shot using an industrial endoscope. The drops were apparently the result of vapor--created by the heat from melted nuclear fuel--that cooled inside the upper part of the reactor containment vessel.

Strong radiation caused scattered white static in the footage, which displayed the severe environment inside the containment vessel, observers said.

The vessel's pipes did not appear to be significantly damaged, but paint had fallen off the inner wall, due possibly to high temperatures following the outbreak of the nuclear crisis.

The endoscope was inserted about two meters into the containment vessel through a hole about seven meters above the bottom of the containment vessel. Visibility was about two meters to three meters.

Melted nuclear fuel is believed to have fallen to the concrete bottom of the containment vessel, but this could not be confirmed.

"Workers can't go into the containment vessel. We need to develop a small robot," said Junichi Matsumoto, acting head of TEPCO's headquarters regarding nuclear plant locations.

Also, the water level inside the reactor was found to be lower than initially estimated. Although TEPCO believed water had collected to a height of 4.5 meters, the examination showed the water height was apparently less than four meters, as the surface of the water was not seen around the iron scaffolding set at a height of four meters.

As one reason why there was less water than TEPCO estimated, the company said the gauge that measures the location of the water's surface did not work accurately.

However, the gauge placed 2.8 meters from the bottom of the vessel indicated a possibility there is water at that level, TEPCO sources said.

"It's quite unlikely nuclear fuel was exposed, as liquid from condensation is dripping down," a TEPCO official said.