– AFP: Fears that molten fuel went into ground after melting through containment vessels at Fukushima — They still can’t find three reactor cores (AUDIO) (ENENews, Jan 23, 2014):
Press Conference with Doug Dasher, University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher, Nov. 6, 2013 (at 8:00 in): Fukushima has continued to leak. They continue not to be able to stabilize or find where some of the melted cores are from the reactors. […] It’s not a stable site. >> Full press conference available here (at 8:00 in)
Kyodo News, Jan. 23, 2014: In an experiment conducted between February 2012 and last month, the team succeeded in using the rays to produce images of nuclear fuel at an offline nuclear plant in Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture. Nuclear fuel melted down at three reactors at the Tepco plant as a result of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. Inaccessible inside the reactors, the melted nuclear fuel’s exact condition remains unknown.
AFP, Jan. 23, 2014: “We are conducting this study carefully as this enables you to find where nuclear fuel is anywhere in the world,” said Fumihiko Takasaki, a researcher at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organisation […] Engineers working on the decades-long decommissioning are faced with a series of difficulties, not least of which is that they do not know exactly where the molten fuel is inside the battered reactors. Present technology is not robust enough to allow them to get a look inside the units, where some fear that fuel has melted through containment vessels and possibly into the ground underneath.
See also: Image published by embassy in Japan shows Fukushima melted fuel deep underground