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Japan Pictures Likely Show Melted Fukushima Fuel for First Time
- mercurysmessage 9y agoI was going to say, I thought computers can't normally operate in those conditions > Because of the high radioactivity levels inside the reactor, only specially designed robots can probe the unit There must be some sort of really powerful shielding on the robot. Cool stuff.
- krapp 9y agoWe've seen pictures of the melted core of Chernobyl too (the "Elephant's Foot") havent' we?
- mercurysmessage 9y agoYes, and here is an article and a pretty scary shot from the Elephants foot. http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/the-elephant-foot-of-the-chernobyl-disaster-1986/ http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/the-elephant-foot-of-the-che... I couldn't find if robots were used here, but I'm sure more were later.
- kalleboo 9y agoYour link says > From a safe distance, workers – or “liquidators” as they were called – rigged up a crude wheeled camera contraption and pushed it towards the Elephant’s Foot
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- 21 9y agoHow do you think those photos were taken? https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KxRuWaD0sXg/U7MHoNyBuiI/AAAAAAAAJhs/qyyqpQXmDQY/s1600/The+Elephant%27s+Foot+of+the+Chernobyl+disaster,+1986+(1).jpg https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KxRuWaD0sXg/U7MHoNyBuiI/AAAAAAAAJ...
- andreapaiola 9y agoHumans, not robots, take the shot
- kijin 9y agoRadioactive shielding is just a bunch of heavy metal. The robot probably has terrible maneuverability and even worse battery life :p
- QAPereo 9y agoThe problem with the "heavy metal" approach is also secondary radiation. Sure, you've protected your package (robot, whatever) from the beta and alpha, but now your metal is re-radiating in the gamma spectrum and practically cooking your goose. Shielding is hard.
- stephengillie 9y agoEdit - Dragon blog post describes "software radiation mitigation" better than I can: http://aviationweek.com/blog/dragons-radiation-tolerant-design http://aviationweek.com/blog/dragons-radiation-tolerant-desi...
- atomwaffel 9y agoAs I feel incompetent to comment on the article's content, I'll be glad to start a thread on the linguistics of that car crash of a headline. It took me three or four fresh starts to parse it correctly. The linguistic term for this is garden path sentence[1][2] and it's such a good one that it makes me wonder if it's deliberate. Even just some small adjustments would make it more readable: "Japanese pictures may show melted fuel from Fukushima for the first time." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldT2g2qDQNQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldT2g2qDQNQ
- mercurysmessage 9y agoThe only real difference from your version to the titles is -ese on Japan. 'Likely' is a fine substitute for 'may show', from my perspective.
- dmurray 9y agoThe OP may have started to read it as "Japan (noun) pictures (verb) likely (adjective)...". Changing "Japan" to "Japanese" and "likely" to "may" eliminates that as a possible interpretation.
- atomwaffel 9y agoThat's exactly what I did. I think my brain even went on to read "show" as a noun, and "may" would have prevented that. Title Case Didn't Help Much Either. Besides that, I'm not sure either "Japan" or "Japanese" is really necessary, because "Fukushima" makes it clear that the pictures are from Japan.
- EliRivers 9y agoThe nation of Japan imagines, for the first time, Fukushima fuel that has probably been melted for display purposes. Which is nice.
- kijin 9y agoMelted Fukushima fuel photographed for the first time. First photos of melted Fukushima fuel. If you take away the tentativeness of "may", "likely", etc., you can make the sentence much easier to read. I wouldn't mind a slight lack of qualifiers as long as the whole thing is not too linkbaity and the content puts the qualifiers back where they belong.
- marze 9y agoI still don't see why they are spending years trying to make rad hard robots. A long steel tube with fiber optics to pipe in light, mirrors and optics to transmit an image down the tube would be infinitely easier. They'd need to burn a few holes, but none of the reactor vessels are intact so that wouldn't allow additional radioactive material to escape. I'm surprised the Japanese decision to dump the all the tritium contaminated water into the ocean hasn't made more news.
- jdubs 9y agoComplex problems often require complex solutions. I imagine that your suggestion works for some situations but not all. The cynical side of me thinks that one of the few benefits of the disaster will be new technology and robots that will help prevent future disasters. I imagine there's a very high priced market for these kinds of hardened robots.
- agumonkey 9y agoThere was a documentary about Tchernobyl surrounding forest few years ago. Most of the vegetation grew back, healthily for my naked eye. Anyways, the most surprising part is that mammals were back too; even though the radiation level was higher than average. I concluded that only a few generation of darwinian selection is needed to breed radiation hardened humans.
- sillysaurus3 9y agoAnimals that die within 5 years probably don't have enough time to succumb to the effects of radiation. That's just a guess though.
- happy-go-lucky 9y agoThis swimming robot is exploring a failed nuclear reactor in Fukushima http://www.businessinsider.com/fukushima-robot-swimming-exploring-failed-nuclear-reactor-2017-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/fukushima-robot-swimming-expl...
- mikeytown2 9y agoIn terms of a hardened robot, hydraulic or pneumatic movement powered by an diesel engine seems like the way to go. depending on the location you could run the pressure lines to the robot and keep the engine outside.
- Alysha3434 9y agoI get paid over $95 per hour working from home with 2 kids at home. I never thought I'd be able to do it but my best friend earns over 10k a month doing this and she convinced me to try. The potential with this is endless. Heres what I've been doing, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfJ3KWPnqqs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfJ3KWPnqqs
- fest 9y agoIs the actuation really the part which needs radiation hardening? The cameras, sensors and processing unit seems more likely affected by radiation than, say a battery and motor.
- Boothroid 9y agoA common response from defenders of nuclear when concerns are raised is to point to the impact of other energy sources, and say that nuclear is better in those terms. But I just cannot get away from the thought that whilst in aggregate those other forms of energy (fossil fuels, etc) might be provably worse than well managed nuclear within a particular analysis, humanity does not seem capable of this good management of nuclear, and when things do go wrong with fossil fuels they don't have the same potential to go quite so spectacularly bad. Yes an oil spill can affect a large area, but you don't get harmful particles washing up on the coast of the US from a spill in Japan in the same way, for example.
- notspanishflu 9y agoI've been pro-nuclear (fission) most of my life but I changed my opinion when I saw that Humanity can't manage when things go south. Still waiting for nuclear fusion though.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- vtange 9y agoProbably far off in the future but assuming we perfect robotics and A.I. wouldn't it be possible to manage nuclear with no human-hands? The thing then will be who takes responsibility for accidents caused by robots..
- gus_massa 9y agoI'm not so optimistic: * Fuckushima: A giant tsunami hit the plant, cut the external power lines and drawn the emergency generators. Not even waterproof robot will fix that. (You can blame bad design or not enough preparation, but robots will not solve that.) * Chernobyl: They disable a few safety system to make some stupid tests. Apparently the safety system were necessary. If you can override the orders of the robots with a password, they will obey stupid orders. (You can blame bad design here too, to make the accident bigger.) * Three Mile Island: Apparently it was partially an human error. Robots may have helped. (Let's blame also bad design a little.)
- afterburner 9y ago"Decommissioning the reactors will cost 8 trillion yen ($72 billion), according to an estimate in December from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Removing the fuel is one of the most important steps in a cleanup that may take as long as 40 years." Hmm, pricey.
- curtis 9y agoThis would be a problem if decommissioning costs for every nuclear reactor were 24 billion dollars (three reactors melted-down at Fukushima). However, decommissioning a reactor is a lot cheaper if it's done normally at the end of the reactor's operational lifetime, rather than done earlier after a melt down, which is a really extraordinary circumstance. And remember that the Fukushima circumstances were pretty extraordinary indeed -- the reactor meltdowns were the consequence of a thousand year tsunami which directly killed nearly 20,000 people.
- helpmate 9y agoThe probable downsides of widespread nuclear fuel deployment is concerning. How is confidence so high that such destructive materials can be safely used at massive scale?