Jan 12, 2014

Japan plans nuclear reactor meltdown to prevent another Fukushima disaster?

Nuclear scientists in Japan are planning a controlled reactor meltdown in the hope of learning how to prevent disasters like the one at the Fukushima power plant in 2011, according to local media reports.

Using a scaled down version of a nuclear reactor, Tomoyuki Sugiyama, a senior scientist at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, told MSN Sankei that scientists "want to help improve the accuracy of the Fukushima accident analysis" using the data from their experiment.

"We want to study exactly how meltdowns happen and apply what we will learn to help improve ways to deal with severe accidents in the future," another spokesman for the government-backed engineering agency told Agence France Presse.