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Fukushima's ground zero: No place for man or robot
- taneq 11y agoI don't understand how "each robot has to be custom built for each building" and "takes two years to build". I mean, they don't need Atlas here. They just need a ruggedized remote control car with a camera and a ton of lead plate on it.
- anon4 11y agoGovernment Bureaucracy.
- leereeves 11y agoJust going by what the article says, it sounds like more than an RC car: robots, which can swim under water and negotiate obstacles in damaged tunnels and piping to search for the melted fuel rods. to find and remove the extremely dangerous blobs of melted fuel rods, weighing hundreds of tonnes
- taneq 11y agoIf it's flooded, just use a commercial underwater ROV. The oil and gas industry has been using them for decades. You don't need a hundred-tonne robot to find a fuel rod, so they can at least get that part sorted. Once they know where they are, build something super rugged (I'm thinking basically a remote controlled shielded fork lift) to do the lifting.
- breischl 11y agoYou seem to be assuming that it's entirely flooded. Seems probable that there are areas that are partially flooded, entirely flooded, or flooded and filled with wreckage. ie, an open water ROV may not be at all appropriate. Certainly if the answer was actually as simple as "buy this off the shelf thing" then all the smart people over there would've figured that out at some point in the last 3 years.
- BillinghamJ 11y agoA friend of mine actually works on these kinds of robots. It's a complex process. They can't risk creating a situation worse than before, and nuclear facilities are pretty sensitive. They usually create 1/4 scale models of the buildings they'll be working with for testing, etc. - it's a big deal.
- hobs 11y agoWow, that sounds really cool, do you/your friend have any further reading?
- emp_zealoth 11y agoseconded, any reading material would be awesome
- BillinghamJ 11y agoHe has posted about it. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11267526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11267526
- taneq 11y agoAre these robots operating fully autonomously? If so, why?
- RyanMcGreal 11y agoPart of the problem is that the R&D has not been done. Under the Myth of Nuclear Safety, Japan has absolutely neglected to do research into designing and building robots that can handle high levels of radiation (if people are working on robots that can handle hazardous environments inside a reactor, that might inadvertently communicate the idea that nuclear power is dangerous).
- Agustus 11y agoThere is no Myth of Nuclear Safety, all energy production has known pro's and con's and approaches are made to mitigate these risk factors. Nuclear energy's risk factors are the easiest to swallow for the waste output. The Fukushima reactor was built to withstand a huge amount of risk factors, they just all happened at the same time. The risk mitigation concept would be to say that you need to design a house to withstand a 10,000 year storm.
- digitalneal 11y agoDoes the US have these kinda Robots or are "we" also under the myth of Nuclear Safety?
- x0x0 11y agoOf course we don't. If we did, we would have given them to Japan. Also, nuclear power advocates in the US would, imo, really not like Fukushima to be a decades long demonstration of the risks of nuclear power. Which it is going to be.
- TotesAThrowAway 11y agoFriend of BillinghamJ here. We do build mock facilities and we have recently started working on the Fukushima Daiichi inspections, and there is only so much I can actually say but I'll share what I can. I'll explain what caused the failure in this part and then I'll move onto the fun stuff in the next post (robots!). In the past, the mock facilities we have made in the past were a quarter of a full scale reactor, rather than a quarter scale reactor, if that makes any sense at all. Anyway back to Japan. I'm assuming people have a basic understanding of how fission reactors work (Boiling Water Reactors if you are interested in doing further reading). To break the situation down, the cooling failed (believe it or not, diesel generators don't work too well on water!) on reactors 1, 2 and 3, causing a complete meltdown of the fuel rods. When cooling failed, all of the cooling water was turned into steam, which in turn reacted with the released radioactive isotopes creating hydrogen. I'm assuming people know mixing hydrogen with oxygen is basically a recipe for an explosion, and that is important for what happened next. They tried to vent the gases out to the atmosphere to prevent the pressure vessel from exploding, but the hydrogen went the wrong way and caused reactors 1 through to 3 to explode in various places. I can't remember correctly (I think its reactor 3?) but the explosion happened within the pressure vessel which is why there was a large contamination breach. Because of this complete loss of control of the reactors, and the meltdown currently happening, they flooded the whole system with sea water and pumped as much out into storage as they can, but they lose a lot of it out to the sea, hence the Americans whining about the radiation in the Pacific. Now, the reactors are stable (ish) and they are continuing to pump water in to stop them going critical again. I'll move onto the robots when I get home in part two, but right now I need to go have an argument with a lawn mower as my hair is getting unruly. The video linked below explains more about the actual failure of the reactor:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMaEjEWL6PU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMaEjEWL6PU Brb.
- TotesAThrowAway 11y agoI should probably also mention there's 6 reactors on site, 4, 5 and 6 were relatively unharmed by the tsunami and 5 and 6 could actually be turned back on. However for obvious reasons they have been decommissioned and wont be turned on ever again.
- barkingcat 11y agoI think you're oversimplifying it. The temperatures are unpredictable, with molten nuclear fuel possibly at 2000 degrees celcius (it might not be there because it's since cooled down, maybe there are temperature probes that can tell you what the current situation is) There are gases circulating around, free hydrogen gas, volatile gases that could explode if exposed to a spark - so the robot has to be built to not spark or have inert mechanisms for turning, moving, etc. Parts are submerged, so this robot needs to be water tight to irradiated water and have some mechanism of moving when submerged (buoyancy control). Radiation is the highest danger to electronics, it's said that all the wires degrade, all the parts of the robot steadily break down when trying to get inside. The chips and control circuitry needs to be radiation hardened, and I bet the "wires" the article refers to means servo control wires - which needs to be linked to servos that are on the limbs - so it's harder to shield. (whereas control chips, the cpu, etc can be shielded by lead plates in a central location)
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- mkesper 11y agoRecent Greenpeace article re Fukushima: The environmental impacts are already becoming apparent, with studies showing: - High radiation concentrations in new leaves, and at least in the case of cedar, in pollen; - apparent increases in growth mutations of fir trees with rising radiation levels; - heritable mutations in pale blue grass butterfly populations and DNA-damaged worms in highly contaminated areas, as well as apparent reduced fertility in barn swallows; - decreases in the abundance of 57 bird species with higher radiation levels over a four year study; and - high levels of caesium contamination in commercially important freshwater fish; and radiological contamination of one of the most important ecosystems – coastal estuaries. http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/press/releases/2016/Fukushima-nuclear-disaster-will-impact-forests-rivers-and-estuaries-for-hundreds-of-years-warns-Greenpeace-report-/ http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/press/releases/20...
- mapt 11y agoComing out of an ecology program? And observing the Chernobyl data? None of that is remotely as damaging to the natural environment as continued human habitation of the area that has been evacuated. Cry not for the fishes and birds, for they are better off with slight genetic damage than they are with us. The threshold at which people become uncomfortable about radiation is several orders of magnitude lower than the threshold at which it causes population decline in wild populations, and people cause declines and extirpations in wild populations all the time.
- morsch 11y agoSo a rational ecology program should advocate irradiating wide swathes of land? Of course the people displaced from the area didn't disappear, they're affecting wildlife somewhere else. Seems like mostly zero sum in that specific regard.
- theoh 11y agoThere's a major question in ecology of how we feel about our "anthropocentric" civilization. For many environmentally conscious thinkers it seems like a world without humans would be preferable.
- marze 11y agoThe robot problem is simply a lack of imagination. Just set up a long drill, like an oil rig, aimed sideways into the reactor. Drill six inch hole with cutting torch drill head, then insert equally long periscope. No rad hard electronics needed.
- ams6110 11y agoThe treated water should probably be pumped onto tanker ships and taken to the middle of the ocean for release. It would be so massively diluted as to be harmless, and remove any chance for local contamination. It would be far safer than leaving it in tanks on-site, which are subject to leaks, intentional damage, etc.
- retube 11y agoYeah but who's gonna crew a tanker of highly irradiated water?
- joeyo 11y agoThe lowest bidder! In all seriousness, radiation shielding (necessary thickness of metal, etc) is quite well understood. It's probably not even an especially hazardous cargo compared to what most tankers haul.
- stordoff 11y agoWith adequate precautions (to name a few examples - shielding, crew dosimeters, crew rotation if more than one trip needed), I imagine it'd be a pretty safe cargo to take. I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually safer than hauling something like oil.
- jperras 11y agoDo you really think a tanker filled with crude oil is much safer?
- pjonesdotca 11y agoDumping the radioactive waste into the ocean is an insanely bad idea.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Retric 11y agoDepends on what your dealing with. Many schools are built using cement that's radioactive enough to be detectable. So, we would call it radioactive waste if it was used near a reactor and not contaminated. But, if it was part of a school and exactly as radioactive then no problem.
- sakopov 11y agoI'm curious if there is any research on purification of irradiated water. A quick search took me here [1]. Couldn't find much else on this. [1] http://acselb-529643017.us-west-2.elb.amazonaws.com/chem/243nm/program/view.php?obj_id=121787&terms= http://acselb-529643017.us-west-2.elb.amazonaws.com/chem/243...
- hasenj 11y agoAm I correct in assuming that the cost of "fire fighting" the situation far outweighs the value of the energy generated from the plant?
- Symmetry 11y agoUnclear. In terms of deaths the number caused by Fukushima is comparable to an equivalent coal plant[1] and we still use coal plants for some reason so the consensus seems to be that the electricity is worth the cost. I'd guess that the Fukushima cleanup and containment costs are going to be small compared to the human costs. As to the cost of the evacuation, that might very well be enough to zero out the economic value. [1]http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2013/12/fukushima-vs-coal.html http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2013/12/fukushima-vs...
- hasenj 11y agoI meant the effort required to clean up the situation and turn off the plant.
- HillaryBriss 11y agoIt's interesting that, in Japan's political environment, the local fishing industry has enough clout to veto TEPCO's proposal to allow radioactive water to leak into the ocean near the site. It's also interesting that the fishing industry, which is usually (correctly) assigned blame for depleting fish stocks is, in this case, protecting fish habitat.
- Pyxl101 11y agoThey deplete fishing stocks by fishing. They don't want people worried that their fish are contaminated, and they don't want their stock depleted by a different cause than fishing.
- HillaryBriss 11y agoYeah. Makes sense. I guess nuclear contamination is in a different category than say, pollution from coal burning power plants, which add a lot of mercury to the environment which then ends up in high level ocean predators like tuna. The fishing industry doesn't seem to have the ability to stop that kind of pollution. Maybe it's because many sea food consumers people casually ignore mercury levels in fish they eat. Or maybe it's because the Japanese seafood supply chain is well enough managed and regulated that people really know where a piece of fish in a market actually came from. Perhaps people carry geiger counters into the supermarkets there. I don't know.
- nitrogen 11y agoThe documentary "The Cove" has a side story about mercury in Japanese seafood from some places.
- xigency 11y agoI used to live here! Not in Fukushima exactly but in Aizu, and I've traveled to Fukushima City. The closest I've been to the reactor is probably 40 miles away from the train in Koriyama.
- mtahaalam 11y agoIndeed!