A "scorpion" robot sent into a Japanese nuclear reactor to learn about the damage suffered in a tsunami-induced meltdown had its mission aborted after the probe ran into trouble, Tokyo Electric Power company said Thursday.
TEPCO, the operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant, sent the remote-controlled device into the No. 2 reactor where radiation levels have recently hit record highs.
The "scorpion" robot, so-called because it can lift up its camera-mounted tail to achieve better viewing angles, is also designed to crawl over rubble inside the damaged facility.
But it could not reach its target destination beneath a pressure vessel through which nuclear fuel is believed to have melted because the robot had difficulty moving, a company spokeswoman said.
"It's not immediately clear if that's because of radiation or obstacles," she said, adding that TEPCO is checking what data the robot was able to obtain, including images.
A massive undersea earthquake on March 11, 2011 sent a huge tsunami barrelling into Japan's northeast coast, leaving more than 18,000 people dead or missing, and sending three reactors into meltdown at the plant in the worst such accident since Chernobyl in 1986.
The Japanese government said in December that it expects the total costs—including compensation, decommissioning and decontamination—to reach 21.5 trillion yen ($189 billion) in a process likely to take decades as high radiation levels slow operations.
The robot, 60 centimetres (24 inches) long, is made by Toshiba and equipped with two cameras and sensors to gauge radiation levels and temperatures.
"Scorpion's mission is to take images of the situation and collect data inside the containment vessel," TEPCO spokesman Shinichi Nakakuki said earlier.
"Challenges include enduring high levels of radiation and moving on the rough surface," he said.
Radiation levels inside the reactor were estimated last week at 650 sieverts per hour at one spot, which can effectively shut down robots in hours.
But the probe—designed to withstand up to 1,000 sieverts of radiation in total—would not sustain severe damage because it was unlikely to remain for too long at a single point, Nakakuki said.
Explore further:
Cleaner robot pulled from Fukushima reactor due to radiation
gkam
No dangers, no intensely-radioactive nuclear waste, no pollution.
antialias_physorg
Please replace this with a meaningful measure. Sievert is the unit for biologically effective dose. A robot is not a biological entity. Gray would be an appropriate unit.
OdinsAcolyte
Fill it with barium. At least it would shield the radiation a bit.
Meanwhile it shall continue to melt....through the water table. Through the crust.
You ain't seen nothing yet.
Fission sucks.
WillieWard
KahntSingh
not now, Fukashima has created a significant mess with yet unknown destruction to come.
Solon
Ruger
Texas A&M University - September 13-14, 1996
Advanced transmutation processes
and their application for the decontamination of radioactive nuclear wastes
Brown's Gas looks like a usable process.
TheGhostofOtto1923
"Radiation hardness
Approx. 1000 Sv (target) or higher
(Design target:100 Sv/h ´ 10 hours)"
"Drive time
Designed to operate approximately for 10 hours in an environment with a dose rate of 100 Sv/h"
http://www.toshib...3001.htm
-The experts who designed this robot preferred sieverts.
I wonder why? I also wonder why you would think you would know better than the experts at toshiba how to rate the radiation tolerance of their robots?
I am guessing that for complex systems designed to perform human-like tasks, sieverts offers a better baseline comparison to what humans could normally tolerate.
But I dont know for sure and wouldnt want to pretend that I did.
1spirit
Japan is hot, the world is in denial, like a cruel joke, the world plans on sending the best athletes on the planet within 100 miles of the worst nuclear disaster ever, dwarfing Chernobyl at this point, because basically no containment exists that is even cutting back on the release of the cores, which by the way have melted down with a continued reaction guaranteed for 1000's of years.
The entire scientific community should be ashamed of themselves, someone step up to the plate before ir is too late...or is it already?
To not fight back when you know, is a crime in itself, to yourself, and to humanity.
The coverup by the Obama people is borderline treason.
WillieWard
"Paranoid Delusion"
https://pbs.twimg...pg:large
"A paranoid delusion is the fixed, false belief that one is being harmed or persecuted by a particular person or group of people. Paranoid delusions are known technically as a "persecutory delusion." "
"It involves the person's belief that he or she is being conspired against, cheated, spied on, followed, poisoned or drugged, maliciously maligned, harassed, or obstructed in the pursuit of long-term goals."
"Small slights may be exaggerated and become the focus of a delusional system with a person suffers from a paranoid delusion."
"The focus of the delusion is often on some injustice that must be remedied by legal action. The affected person may engage in repeated attempts to obtain satisfaction by appeal to the courts and other government agencies..."
https://psychcent...elusion/
jakeo
gkam
REAL.
Not a paranoid delusion. Not a misunderstanding.
Three meltdowns, four reactors damaged permanently.
The cost so far is estimated to be over $190,000,000,000, and the time of 40 years, or two generations of our best engineers, technicians, managers, and workers.
Are you confessing to delusions?
gkam
https://phys.org/...due.html
WillieWard
"Closure of Vermont Yankee nuclear plant boosted greenhouse gas emissions in New England" - Feb 18, 2017
http://www.massli...ank.html
The anti-nuclear movement should be renamed the pro-fossil fuel movement.
gkam
The radiation fries everything, Willie, what are you going to do?
gkam
That is 3.5, Willie, and the robot got more than 1000!
Will you go in there and save us?
http://blogs.agu....ill-you/
Frosted Flake
Insert appropriate swear words here.
WillieWard
https://fabiusmax...g-no.jpg
gkam
Feb 19, 2017gkam
-------------------------------
Okay, I'll watch, you show me how you do it. Don't forget to bypass the interlock.
TheGhostofOtto1923
Engage at your own peril.
Da Schneib
People who tend nuclear reactors should be as disciplined as people who tend weapons of war. Or dams. Or mass transit.
And for all the same reasons.
WillieWard
Faux-greens and their double standards.
Eikka
The Sievert measures the effective absorbed energy per mass, or Joules per kg. It is the same unit as Gray, except it has different weights for different types of radiation.For x-rays, gamma, beta radiation Gray and Sievert are equal in magnitude.
This is also why they use Sieverts instead of Gray - Gray measures the applied dose and Sievert measures the absorbed dose. You can shower the robot in alpha radiation and its absorbed dose would be zero because it won't penetrate its metal shell.
So when they say the robot withstands 1,000 Sieverts, it can absorb 1000 Joules of energy from the radiation to its circuitry before something is expected to break. Of course, 1000 Joules of energy applied on some structural part won't do much anything except warm it up slightly.
gkam
Eikka
That's bullcrap. The mortality rate for acute radiation syndrome for doses between 2-6 Sv have a mortality rate ranging from 5 - 95% when untreated, and 5-50% when treated.
Assuming linear effect, about 4/5 people would survive a 3.5 Sv acute radiation dose with treatment, and would carry an additional 17% increase in lifetime risk of cancer.
The analog to a structural part of a robot in people would be dry bone, so no, it wouldn't do much different. The point is moot though because you're not crawling in there under 650 Sv/h radiation - the robot is.
Eikka
That's not a very high standard. If nuclear power was run the same as dams we'd have a meltdown somewhere around the world every year.
Every year some dozen people die because of a burst dam. Every few decades there's a big burst and hundreds or thousands die. The worst incident in 1975 at Banqiao Dam, China, was estimated to claim 171,000 lives.
It doesn't make very much difference whether a city is lost to a raging torrent than to a nuclear accident, because it will still take 60 years and hundreds of billions to clean up and rebuild - yet you don't find many people marching against hydroelectric dams with the same zeal as they march against nuclear power.
gkam
http://www.ecowat...79.html?
http://www.utilit.../436832/
Looks like a future of renewable resources to me.
SiaoX
gkam
gkam
http://news.xinhu...0119.htm
"Smoke billowing" from Japan nuclear plant — Possible fire reported near reactors — TEPCO "has not identified the cause of the incident"
WillieWard
https://pbs.twimg...aw-Q.jpg
https://atomicins...icol.pdf
"The rise of LNT theory was really the result of a political motivation by a group of radiation geneticists."
http://thebreakth...too-much
https://phys.org/...ogy.html
"LNT is a leftover Cold War ideology that states all radiation is bad, even the background radiation we are bathed in every day"
"it has become an ideology "ruled by hysteria and fueled by ignorance" "
http://www.forbes...kushima/
gkam
How long would you last?
WillieWard
gkam
What kind of clean power system could we build for that kind of money, instead of wasting it trying to survive your nuclear disasters?
WillieWard
gkam
Da Schneib
timetogo2
Mar 06, 2017