TOKYO: The operator of Japan’s damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant has announced that the trial removal of radioactive debris from a damaged reactor planned for this week has been postponed due to a technical problem.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) wanted to remove a tiny sample of the estimated 880 tons of radioactive debris believed to be in the reactors of the nuclear power plant affected by the tsunami.

But after preparatory steps for the test recovery were completed on Thursday morning (22 August), a Tepco spokesman said the operator had “decided to stop the work”.

The sample removal will not continue on Friday because the operator needs to “investigate the cause of the malfunction,” another spokesman, Tatsuya Matoba, told AFP on Friday.

“We cannot rule out that we will start again this Saturday, but personally I have never seen such an operation start on a Saturday or Sunday,” he said.

He added that it was also unclear whether work would resume next week.

“It depends on how thoroughly we investigate,” he said.

Three of the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant were in operation when a tsunami hit the plant on March 11, 2011. The cooling systems were destroyed and a core meltdown occurred. It was the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

In three blocks of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, fuel and other materials melted and then solidified into highly radioactive “fuel debris”.