Two robots that can change their shape on command have provided the most detailed look yet inside the heart of reactor number 1 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in Japan.

The reactor is one of three that suffered a core meltdown after the massive tsunami that knocked electrical systems offline at the plant in March 2011, prompting a nuclear emergency that will take decades to clean up.

One of the most difficult jobs for the plant’s owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), is how to safely decommission the reactors that melted down, which are much too dangerous for humans to enter.

The robots are inspecting the reactor’s primary containment vessel (PCV), a large concrete structure that sits around the reactor and most of its associated machinery and piping. Molten nuclear fuel melted through the bottom of the reactor following the tsunami and is thought to have fallen to the floor of the PCV.

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