Robot Squeezes Suspected Nuclear Fuel Debris in Fukushima Reactor (theverge.com)

A robot outfitted with remotely controlled pinchers poked at debris that's suspected to contain molten nuclear fuel at the bottom of one of Fukushima's nuclear reactors, World Nuclear News reports. From a report: The poking and prodding is part of the ongoing cleanup effort at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi power plant, the site of a major nuclear accident in 2011. The dextrous robot was dangled into the Unit 2 reactor on February 13th, according to a news release from the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). Unit 2 is one of the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant that overheated after a massive earthquake and tsunami hit Japan in 2011, which caused the reactor core to melt. TEPCO suspects that radioactive fuel may have melted through the bottom of the reactor vessel to fall into the containment structure surrounding it. The company has to find the radioactive debris and figure out how to remove them, so TEPCO has been sending in a series of robots to scout out the reactors. It's a dangerous journey that some of the robots haven't survived.

Comments

Re:So this -still- hasn't been contained?

[AmiMoJo]

That's pretty much the problem, they can barely get to it, let alone remove it for burial. They are trying to avoid it becoming another huge Chernobyl-style concrete coffin because it would need to be protected from tsunami and constantly maintained (they have regular earthquakes) indefinitely.

Also "overheated" is a rather obvious attempt to avoid the word "meltdown".

Please don't squeeze the Charmin

[jfdavis668]

Mr. Whipple will get upset.

Re:whare are all the nuclear apologists?

[Solandri]

• Chernoby cleanup cost: $235 billion.
• Fukushima cleanup cost: $197 billion
• Total amount of nuclear power generated since commercial nuclear power became widely available: about 86000 TWh
  about 20 years ramping up from 0 to 2000 TWh/yr, plus 30 years at about 2200 TWh/yr = (20*2000/2) + (30*2200) = 86000

Cost of the above two cleanups divided by the amount of energy generated by nuclear power: $432 billion / 86000 billion kWh = $0.005 per kWh = 0.5 cents per kWh

I can live with paying an extra half cent per kWh to cover cleaning up after the occasional disaster every 25 years, in exchange for using a completely carbon-neutral power source which boasts the fewest deaths per amount of power generated. Why exactly are you opposed to it?

Re:whare are all the nuclear apologists?

[MrKaos]

I'm not a nuclear apologist by any means, but it's an empty argument to say Fukushima means nuclear is impossible. Nobody would build a plant remotely like this one, or situate a modern plant anywhere like there.

Consider that there is approximately 80 of these types of reactors still in operation and that their service life is 40 years which has been extended to increase the return on investment.

The next thing to consider is that it is possible to make a reactor design that isn't an improvement over older designs. Currently the best one is EPR which...

And if we do we need to build what we've learned about organizations running nuclear plants (we can't rely on them doing the right thing) into the design.

incorporates some of the improvements the NRC commissioned the Nuclear industry to uncover. They came up with 30 improvements to Nuclear reactor design. The most significant improvement was to build them underground. What was discovered is that this makes Nuclear power more costly to build, which scares off investors. So it's not impossible to make nuclear safe, it's very expensive.

I'm a huge proponent of upgrade the electric grid. This would enable renewable sources to power distant cities, but it could *coincidentally* give more flexibility in locating nuclear plants, should we decide to build more of them.

The criteria for locating nuclear facilities is specific process based on its requirements. It is a difficult process so it is surrounded by law to exclude the general population from interfering with it. It's much easier to extend the grid to somewhere it is appropriate to build a nuclear facility.

I don't believe we should have a all-eggs-in-one basket approach to our energy needs. A diverse portfolio of energy sources means we can build them where the marginal risk/environmental cost is minimal.

Indeed. We should immediately begin a program to increase the amount of solar, wind and geothermal energy that we are producing while we can draw energy from these legacy supply methods.