Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Images taken by miniature drones from deep inside a badly damaged reactor at the Fukushima nuclear plant show displaced control equipment and misshapen materials but leave many questions unanswered, underscoring the daunting task of decommissioning the plant.
The 12 photos released by the plant's operator are the first from inside the main structural support called the pedestal in the hardest-hit No. 1 reactor’s primary containment vessel, an area directly under the reactor's core. Officials had long hoped to reach the area to examine the core and melted nuclear fuel which dripped there when the plant's cooling systems were damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
Earlier attempts with robots were unable to reach the area. The two-day probe using tiny drones was completed last week by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, or TEPCO, which released the photos on Monday.
About 880 tons of highly radioactive melted nuclear fuel remain inside the three damaged reactors. TEPCO is attempting to learn more about its location and condition to facilitate its removal so the plant can be decommissioned.
This image taken by a drone and provided by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) shows the snake-shaped robot designed to assist a drone inside the No. 1 reactor as a drone probes inside of the worst-hit reactor at the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma town, northeastern Japan, on March 14, 2024. (TEPCO via AP)
The high-definition color images captured by the drones show brown objects with various shapes and sizes dangling from various locations in the pedestal. Parts of the control-rod drive mechanism, which controls the nuclear chain reaction, and other equipment attached to the core were dislodged.
TEPCO officials said they were unable to tell from the images whether the dangling lumps were melted fuel or melted equipment without obtaining other data such as radiation levels. The drones did not carry dosimeters to measure radiation because they had to be lightweight and maneuverable.
The drone cameras could not see the bottom of the reactor core, in part because of the darkness of the containment vessel, officials said. Information from the probe could help future investigations of the melted debris which are key to developing technologies and robots for its removal, they said.
This image was taken a drone and provided by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) shows displaced equipment and misshapen materials inside the No. 1 reactor as a drone probes the inside of the worst-hit reactor at the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma town, northeastern Japan, on March 14, 2024. (TEPCO via AP)
But the large amount that remains unknown about the interior of the reactors suggests how difficult it will be. Critics say the 30-40 year target for the plant's cleanup set by the government and TEPCO is overly optimistic.
The daunting decommissioning process has already been delayed for years by technical hurdles and the lack of data.
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel.
Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.
Staff at a small southern Alberta office supply store were shocked to find someone had broken into the business last week, but they were even more confused when they discovered the culprit was a bear.
President Joe Biden has called Japan and India “xenophobic” countries that do not welcome immigrants, lumping the two with adversaries China and Russia as he tried to explain their economic circumstances and contrasted the four with the U.S. on immigration.
Montreal police are facing pressure to move in and dismantle a pro-Palestinian encampment on McGill University campus on Thursday, as a growing number of universities across this country grapple with the tough decision of how to handle the protests.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.
The lawyer for a residential school survivor leading a proposed class-action defamation lawsuit against the Catholic Church over residential schools says the court action is a last resort.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.