> At the plant’s entrance, a sign warned: “Games like Pokemon GO are forbidden within the facility.” Was this a thing people were doing? Going to a nuclear disaster site as part of a game?
maybe they thought they could find a genuine pokemon?
Six Years After Fukushima, Robots Finally Find Reactors’ Melted Uranium Fuel
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Re: Six Years After Fukushima, Robots Finally Find Reactors’ Melted Uranium Fuel
#12Kind of surprising at this point that there’s not an area directly below the bottom of the reactor with a giant ceramic catch basin (or something similarly heat resistant) to catch these failures and cleared of pipes etc so when this happens cleanup workers know the location of the materials.
I think that is easier said than done, the temperatures are in the several thousands of degrees here.
Clay would hold that wouldn't it?
Re: Six Years After Fukushima, Robots Finally Find Reactors’ Melted Uranium Fuel
#13> At the plant’s entrance, a sign warned: “Games like Pokemon GO are forbidden within the facility.” Was this a thing people were doing? Going to a nuclear disaster site as part of a game?
maybe they thought they could find a genuine pokemon?
It's exactly the sort of place where you'd find the baddest pokemon in the game.
Re: Six Years After Fukushima, Robots Finally Find Reactors’ Melted Uranium Fuel
#14> At the plant’s entrance, a sign warned: “Games like Pokemon GO are forbidden within the facility.” Was this a thing people were doing? Going to a nuclear disaster site as part of a game?
Signs forbidden the use of games like Pokemon Go are quite common across Japans. You find them at many Temples etc. Many cafes/bars/eateries have signs out the front with drawings of the Pokemon you'd find nearby with Pokemon Go.
Source. Went through Japan playing Pokemon Go.. saw many many Japanese people playing Pokemon Go. And signs.. signs with Pokemon everywhere.
Re: Six Years After Fukushima, Robots Finally Find Reactors’ Melted Uranium Fuel
#15"At Chernobyl, the Soviets simply entombed the charred reactor in concrete after the deadly 1986 accident. But Japan has pledged to dismantle the Fukushima plant and decontaminate the surrounding countryside, which was home to about 160,000 people who were evacuated after accident."
How much of this decision is simply about space? Russia is the largest country by area, with 21 people per square mile, while Japan is much smaller, with 873 people per square mile. If you compare GDP/area the difference is even greater.
Re: Six Years After Fukushima, Robots Finally Find Reactors’ Melted Uranium Fuel
#16Does anyone know how they extract the molten fuel? Sounds like they will use more robots, but if it's taken this long just to get a robot to see the target, how on earth does a robot retrieve this stuff? Must be a career defining experience for these robotists, doing something that can really help an awful situation
Re: Six Years After Fukushima, Robots Finally Find Reactors’ Melted Uranium Fuel
#17Kind of surprising at this point that there’s not an area directly below the bottom of the reactor with a giant ceramic catch basin (or something similarly heat resistant) to catch these failures and cleared of pipes etc so when this happens cleanup workers know the location of the materials.
I think that is easier said than done, the temperatures are in the several thousands of degrees here.
And radioactive. Which changes the atoms if which your containment material is made of. Which makes things much, much more difficult.
Re: Six Years After Fukushima, Robots Finally Find Reactors’ Melted Uranium Fuel
#18What is the article talking about when they say "radiation-hardened materials"? What kind of materials might that be?
Re: Six Years After Fukushima, Robots Finally Find Reactors’ Melted Uranium Fuel
#19Non-mobile link: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/science/japan-fukushima-n...
Re: Six Years After Fukushima, Robots Finally Find Reactors’ Melted Uranium Fuel
#20Kind of surprising at this point that there’s not an area directly below the bottom of the reactor with a giant ceramic catch basin (or something similarly heat resistant) to catch these failures and cleared of pipes etc so when this happens cleanup workers know the location of the materials.
> Kind of surprising at this point
Fukushima was built when the nuclear power industry was 13 years old. Now it's 63 years old.
You are seeing the folly of youth, with consequences delayed 60 years, not a design that would be typical of new construction.