Race for Japan's Melted Nuclear Fuel Leaves Trail of Dead Robots

This is an automatic summary, original reduced by 81%.

The latest robot seeking to find the 600 tons of nuclear fuel and debris that melted down six year ago in Japan's wrecked Fukushima Dai-Ichi power plant met its end in less than a day.

Two previous robots aborted similar missions after one got stuck in a gap and another was abandoned after finding no fuel in six days.

It's not yet known if the fuel melted into or through the containment vessel's concrete floor, and determining the fuel's radioactivity and location is crucial to inventing the technology needed to remove it.

"The roadmap for removing the fuel is going to be long, 2020 and beyond," Jacopo Buongiorno, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in an e-mail.

Tepco released images last month of a grate under the No. 2 reactor covered in black residue that may be the melted fuel - one of the strongest clues yet to its location.

Toshiba is developing another robot to search for melted fuel, planned to enter sometime in the year ending March 2018.

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