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Robots Enter Fukushima Reactor Building
swandives writes "For the first time, a pair of remote controlled robots have entered a reactor building at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power hopes the iRobot Packbots will be able to provide data on the current condition inside the buildings, although the company hasn't yet released any information on what they found inside."
I object to letting our robotic overlords have control of nuclear material.
Thanks to Google. Once they find out that long term disability and on-the-job life insurance does not extend to robots. This will be just one of many stepping stones to the robot uprising, mark my words!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The 9.0 earthquake is now said to have been the largest ever recorded to have hit a civilized area.
Because as we all know, Chile, Indonesia and Anchorage, Alaska are composed entirely of backwards tribal villages.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Allow me to be the first to say, "domo arigato, Mr. Roboto!"
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
I'm not even pro-nuclear (I'd call it the lesser of two evils), and even I take exception to the assumption that the realists about Fukushima (or Chernobyl for that matter) must be nuclear industry shills.
There is a general trend of alarmist hysteria surrounding nuclear power, and slashdot is one of the few places I read where there are people basically telling the alarmists to stow it. A few of these people shouting down the anti-nuclear sentiment are strongly biased in favour of nuclear power, but most are simply more informed about the risks involved than the general public. Dismissing the anti-alarmist commentators as "nuclear industry PR folks" is essentially throwing reason out the window in favour of fear.
(Just to preempt the inevitable accusation that I am "one of them", my own view is that nuclear power plants should be built in lieu of coal power plants. See the "lesser of two evils" sentiment above. I'm all in favour of solar homes and where local conditions permit I support hydro, geothermal or other means of power collection. In the long run I think fusion offers our best hope. Nuclear power is a stopgap.)
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
I am surprised they weren't doing this on day 2 after the event.
Me too. After 9/11, there were robots on scene in under 2 days. The iRobot unit being used here is a standard PackBot, of which about 20,000 have been manufactured for the US military.
The worst aspect of this disaster for the future of nuclear power is that it all came merely from a loss of cooling. The plant survived the earthquake. The reactor's cooling system survived the tsunami and continued to function until the battery backups were drained. Loss of cooling caused heat buildup, hydrogen release, and the hydrogen explosions. All the damage you're seeing is from the hydrogen explosiions, not the natural disaster.
A total loss of cooling power could happen for other reasons - a fire, tornado, hurricane, or act of terrorism. There's been a design assumption that no disaster would result in the loss of all power sources. That turns out to be a bad assumption.
Great, if they are like my Roomba they will bounce from one wall to another in the corner, scream loudly, and then shutdown.
With all the stories of robots invented by Japanese over time, I am surprised they weren't doing this on day 2 after the event.
Give them a break, they had to mod the robot so that it's mouth no longer vibrated sensuously .
First and foremost most of the damage was not actually done by the earthquake itself, most of the fatalities, and the cause of the Fukushima incident was the tsunami, not the earthquake. And even assuming "civilized" means "heavily populated", it still ignores that whole Indian Ocean tsunami that occurred in a heavily populated area.
Actually the fact that the earthquake occurred so close to the shore probably SAVED lives in the end. In the Indian ocean quake, most of the affected areas never actually felt the quake, all they saw was the water receding then a giant wave. Most had no chance to escape. At least in Japan the fact that the quake was so powerful gave an unmistakable warning to the people living near the coast to get to high ground. The closeness of the earthquake to the shore probably ended up saving, not costing, lives.
Monstar L
It is not Chernobyl, but still a level 7 disaster with 1/8 the amount of radiation leaked (very very large). Chernobyl is so radioactive that it can't be inhabited for at least a few centuries.
If the core and its steal containment structure is melted with radioactive material with water leaking through cracked concrete from it, then indeed the situation is much more serious. Radiation is going up in the sea outside the plant right after a 5.9 aftershock. This was after it fell when the leak was plugged. This points to a crack through the foundation where this is leaking into the groundwater and sea.
Either way, it is very rational to view this as a catastrophy and these robots will be needed to find out what is going on and how to fix the plant. If the worst fears are true and that the metal reactors themselves have melted then I do not know how it can be fixed. It took 20 years before people could enter the reactor after 3 mile island shutdown to actually see the partial meltdown to confirm it.
Not something to laugh about and forget by any sense of the means
http://saveie6.com/
Geothermal is also nuclear power. It relies on the intrinsic fission of elements within the Earth's mantle, and legacy heat from prior fission as well as legacy friction from planetary formation. It's implemented by steam turbines also, or turbines driven by the flash evaporation of some other coolant.
The difference betweent fission, fusion and geothermal is that geothermal requires no fuel creation or elimination. You dig two deep holes fairly close together and force water down one of them. The heat of the Earth heats the water, which comes up the other hole - usually as steam or superheated water that will become steam when the pressure is released, but sometimes just as much hotter water. Naturally after the energy gained is tapped, the hot water is then re-injected. For new water some use sewage effluent and solve two problems at once. There is no ash, no spent fuel to rot in casks 100,000 years under close supervision of a non-proliferation task force. There are no mining deaths because there's no mine. There are no refining risks because there's no refining. There's no proliferation risk because there's no nuclear products onsite. The cost of dealing with the emissions are well understood because there aren't any. Geothermal plants require a much smaller geographic footprint than even nuclear plants, because they can mine energy from several miles in each direction and there is no risk.
With geothermal power in the event of a disaster of the worst possible sort: a Geothermal plant is simultaneously attacked by terrorists, crushed by a 10.3 earthquake and inundated by the subsequent 90m tsunami at the exact moment that a Justin Bieber album goes platinum, the worst that can happen is that some steam will vent and electricity will stop being generated, and Justin Bieber gets a slot on Dancing With the Stars. That's not a lot of downside risk, relative to fission and fusion.
There are established economies on Earth that can't provide 100% of their electrical energy needs from geothermal sources. Some parts of Africa, the US East Coast, Brazil. Japan, though? Yes, they could. Their entire nation is a chain of active volcanos. They are geothermal rich beyond the dreams of avarice.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Actually, thus far every design type of theoretical fusion plant would necessarily create radioactive waste, although not as much of it as fission plants. The reason is the same one that the waste-water in the original article is a problem: nuclear reactions work by massive cascades of nutrons randomly hitting atoms in the core. When those nutrons hit the nucleus of an atom (in a way that causes them to be absorbed in the right way), then you get your nuclear reaction, and that in turn produces more neutrons as ersatz-billiard-balls to continue your reaction, plus energy (in the form of heat) that you harvest off (usually with water) to convert into your power-transmission method of choice (usually electricity).
The problem in all of this is that you can't just limit it to your fuel and your energy harvester (water), you wind up with lots of other elements in the reaction chamber that also get bombarded with neutrons. And some percentage of those elements are going to wind up transmuting into radioactive waste.
In the case of a fusion reactor that is probably going to be whatever serves as the reaction chamber wall. Remember, neutrons are magnetically/electrically neutral particles, so you can't contain them using magnets, so you just have to let your reactor wall take the hits, and slowly degrade into radioactive waste. No one has a solution to this problem, and it is unlikely that one exists.
So, there really is no pedantic to call out here. Nuclear energy produces nuclear waste, the only question is how much (vs. the extracted energy), and how bad the byproducts will be.
"Banri Kaieda spoke to reporters on Sunday shortly after Tokyo Electric Power Company presented a road map to cool down the reactors and significantly reduce radiation leaks in 6 to 9 months" http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/17_16.html It's only 6 to 9 months no big deal right? "Radiation levels measured between the double doors of those reactor buildings was 270 millisieverts in the Number One reactor, 12 in Number 2, and 10 in Number 3. The radiation level detected at the Number One reactor exceeds the national exposure limit of 250 millisieverts for nuclear contract workers." http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/18_03.html Three reactors melting down and at least one breached , plus several tons of waste fuels rods that have melted or blown away and are still currently boiling off, plutonium found around the plant on the ground , not to mention the dumping of highly radioactive water into the ocean for over a month but no big deal right? http://www.vgb.org/vgbmultimedia/News/Fukushimav15VGB.pdf If you have a mind to look behind the curtain http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread672665/pg739
There is one serious problem with sending robots there.
All the old BOFH jokes about cosmic rays? It's all true in there.
High radiation levels make bits skip like crazy in high-density memory and CPUs. Your parrot drone's firmware would crash within a mile of the power plant, unless you shield the CPU with enough lead so that it would never take off.
Then try to drive that remotely. The name "radioactivity" is not there in vain. It really creates horrible noise in all radio frequencies, so forget "fly by radio" models. Either it's autonomous, or driven by cable, or you set up a goddamned 100KW radio tower for driving your drone to overcome all the noise.
And then you got a ground drone with all electronics shielded by an inch of lead, driven by a mile long spool of cable unwound from a roll on the back. Now give it a camera that can still see the outside and won't crash due to radiation - possibly analog, with only the CCD exposed, and in such a way that radiation won't pass inside bypassing the lenses. Give it a manipulator arm that has all electronics shielded. Give it a battery that will be able to drive the half a ton of lead, 100kg of wire, and another half a ton of hardware of the device - forget your fancy micro engines, every exposed part must be thick rugged so that electric noise doesn't affect it. Make sure it's radiation-leak proof, because even a small hole in the shield may crash the software.
And now build it. How long will it take you to do it?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Conservative estimates (Areva) point to at least 60% meltdown in three cores, mobilization of about half the cores' inventory of solubles and of essentially all gases.
That's way more material than a Tsar Bomba or three (remember, the Tsar Bomba was high-altitude, 90-something % fusion yield). I'm not even counting the three cooling pools with unknown amounts of water in them which are steaming and outgassing in the open.
Is it more than Chernobyl? Certainly not, in terms of heavy metals and activated carbon released, so the long-term effects (heavy metal toxicity, mostly) will not be as pronounced.
I see, howewver, an estimation of 1T Bq/hr being released. That's definitely going somewhere and with the monsoon season starting, that somewhere is the southwest of Japan (Kanto will be hardest hit, if this is a regular monsoon).
I have reason to believe that additional cancers, birth defects and miscarriages over the next 30-50 years or so will not be correctly reported, nor, indeed, correctly attributed should they be detected. Even simple facts such as radiation measurements are being withheld or obfuscated.
Also, you yourself are spreading untruths. The plant was on an approved 10 year life-extension that had just started. The earthquake was definitely not the biggest earthquake ever and its magnitude at Fukushima was even lower than that, because of distance from the epicenter mainly.
The #2 reactor is cracked. That could not have happened because of the tsunami (not enough energy), nor can it be because of the hydrogen explosion ("wrong" blast pattern). That leaves only one culprit - the earthquake itself, which indeed exceeded the puny 7.5 Richter design maximum.
There is now talk (from TEPCO) of flooding the reactor buildings. They are not designed to hold water in the first place. They are already compromised, structurally, by a massive earthquake, two aftershocks and an explosion each. Will they hold if another quake comes?
No need to answer that, of course. Just go back to your dreams of "energy too cheap to meter".
Meanwhile I object to calling the guys that say "the roof won't blow off" etc etc "realists".
As I see it one of the biggest problems is the expectation of 100% zealous fanboy behaviour or you are out. Suggest a thorium solution on the ground of increased safety? Out the door you go, distinguished career over with the successful project cancelled. Suggest a brilliant way to very cheaply chemically incorporate everything in high grade waste in a stable material? There is no waste problem screams the fanboys - you cannot have your dismal amount of funding so it's going to take you three decades to put the finishing touches on.
Once nuclear power became a way to funnel huge amounts of money from the taxpayers it ceased to be anything other than an excuse for that transfer so it was technologically finished in the USA. What Westinghouse would sell you before Toshiba got involved was little more than TMI painted green. Now it's currently not much better. Meanwhile South Africa has more advanced civilian nuclear technology - derived from that via Germany is the pebble bed reactor in China. India is way ahead. France for all it's troubles and the dead end of plutonium fast breeders and pointless reprocessing is well ahead.
Meanwhile in the USA it's just a cheer squad that pretends it is all perfect and it's rare that some improvement sneaks in from elsewhere (eg. the Toshiba stuff that inspired the AP1000). It's been a dead industry in the USA since even before Carter told them they had to survive on their own merits.
I continue to conclude: It's not Chernobyl. When all this began I said a worst case would be one or more Tsar Bomba equivalents. We now know it is far less than that. It does not appear that the entire mess will equal one Chernobyl.
Rubbish, Tsar Bomba's fall out is measured in kilograms, Chernobyls around 10's of tons. Due to the spent fuel pools there is approximately 30-40 years worth of spent fuel at Fukushima and we could be looking at around 800-1000 tons of plutonium assuming a 10 year refueling cycle. Great that it didn't blow up however the release of radionuclides will continue to occur until all the leaks are repaired. The question is how this will be achieved. Chernobyl released it's radionuclides into the air and all over the land because it was land locked. It seems that because Fukushima is releasing its radionuclide yield into the ocean that this is somehow less concerning. Let's do and see the science and asses the actual damage based on that, not hyperbole.
There are debates about "extra" cancer cases caused by nuclear power, but I know of no proof that there have been any.
The claim can be made for two reasons. First at TMI the science wasn't even done. Dr Carl Johnson, an expert in radiation related diseases asked the NRC and DOE to do a survey to look for some of these elements in the respirable dust around TMI after the accident and they refused. So if the authorities *refused* to take measurements on which to base long term cancer studies can be based, how can a supposition be made about how many lives have been lost due to increased cancer rates?
It can be best summed up by this 2004 quote of Dr Michael Fernex formerly of the University of Basel who worked for the WHO;
"Six years ago we tried to have a conference. The proceedings were never published. This is because in this matter the organisations at the UN are subordinate to the IAEA. Since 1986 the WHO did nothing about studying Chernobyl. It's a pity. The interdiction to publish which fell upon the WHO conference came from the IAEA. The IAEA blocked the proceedings; the truth would have been a disaster for the nuclear industry"
Here is the actual text of the agreement. However the UNICEF report "Human consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear accident" summarised it neatly;
"Life expectancy for men in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, for example, is some ten years less that Sri Lanka, which is one of the twenty poorest countries in the world and is in the middle of a long drawn out war"
Maybe Pournelle is just to lazy to look and since cancer takes years to gestate I think it's premature to understand the damage done to the Japanese populace by Fukushima.
the Chinese are moving toward both. The United States is moving away from both. The results are predictable.
Absolutely predicable. If they make the same tragic organisational mistakes that every other country has made then we will see an accident on the same scale. It's difficult to believe that the Chinese will succeed where the UK, USA, USSR, Germany and now Japan has failed.
Of course the plant was older and scheduled for retirement to begin with.
Of course this is completely irrelevant and actually should have promoted investment in *ensuring* the plant wouldn't fail. The activated isotopes inside the reactor, or CRUD (Chalk River Unidentified Deposits - look it up), will be leaking into the Pacific if the reactor vessel is as breached as it appears to be. I suspect we are just at the
My ism, it's full of beliefs.