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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

#71

Post by distances »

Rapzid wrote: post #34
jjoonathan wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Sounds like life :| Those cigarettes you smoked in your early twenties? Those beers you smashed working in IT? 63 will be interesting..

> Those beers you smashed working in IT? 63 will be interesting..

If any, I'd guess this correlation to be negative vs. the general population

Re: Six Years After Fukushima, Robots Finally Find Reactors’ Melted Uranium Fuel

#73

Post by SiempreViernes »

wiz21c wrote: post #38

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... reminds us that nuclear kills much less than regular earthquakes, car accidents, or air pollution due to the burning of fossil fuels...

Most radiation kills are due to slow secondary effects, so it's relatively easy to get out of the way. I don't think anyone really argues that if people would move back before deconamination they would all be fine.

Just for reference, the number of people worldwide who died due to contamination from atmospheric atom bomb testing is estimated to be 430 000 by the end of last century:

"Radioactive Heaven and Earth, The health and environmental effects of nuclear weapons testing in, on, and above the earth", pages 163-165

Re: Six Years After Fukushima, Robots Finally Find Reactors’ Melted Uranium Fuel

#74

Post by wruza »

izacus wrote: post #48
dopamean wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not but it was in the USSR at the time which many people incorrectly equate with Russia today. To me it's almost ok to say "Russia" when talking about things back then. So long as you don't say Chernobyl is in Russia today.

Ukraine and Russia were practically in a shooting war a few years ago. It's about as "ok" as walking around your Californian office calling people "Confederates"... if the civil war happened in 2014. Don't insult people with ignorance.

This one is also an exaggregation. Russian government supported anti-government forces in East Ukraine, so they could fight against their own enemy. Russian profit in it is destabilized buffer between RF and NATO expansion (driven by purely military ambitions of the force external to conflict). I had few discussions with eastern ukrainians. All of them hate western Ukraine (mutually ofc) and said it was always like that. Absolute evil-izing of russians is a big mass-media program in Ukraine, not the other way round. It is not very succesful though, because both nations are heavily mixed.

I’m not appreciating the situation, but let’s not fall into Evil Axis delusions.

Re: Six Years After Fukushima, Robots Finally Find Reactors’ Melted Uranium Fuel

#75

Post by lovemenot »

adekok wrote: post #46
wiz21c wrote: post #38

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... reminds us that nuclear kills much less than regular earthquakes, car accidents, or air pollution due to the burning of fossil fuels...

And that's with incompetence and neglect. http://chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/cause/ Personnel had an insufficiently detailed understanding of technical procedures involved with the nuclear reactor, and knowingly ignored regulations to speed test completion And a Japanese reactor that didn't melt down: https://thebulletin.org/onagawa-japanese-nuclear-power-plant... Before beginning construction, Tohoku Ele…

>> And that's with incompetence and neglect.

Yes, and rightly so. Engineers must design around human fallibility. They don't get to blame human error and claim the whole system is otherwise perfectly safe. Either the system is safe under conditions of human fallibility, or it is unsafe.

>> There's just no good reason for either Chernobyl or Fukushima

Of course there is reason. Humans are part of the system and a relatively weak part at that.

Re: Six Years After Fukushima, Robots Finally Find Reactors’ Melted Uranium Fuel

#76

Post by wruza »

trhway wrote: post #42
NikolaeVarius wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably nowhere near as dangerous but I think its interesting. https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/in-the-shadow-of-cherno...

A number of Russian middle class volunteers who fought in Donbass war treated it as kind of similar experience - an adventurous game/vacation, a "noble quest to defend 'Russian world' from dark forces of fascism and imperialism".

Is there an evidence of that? We could open a case for these war crimes.

Re: Six Years After Fukushima, Robots Finally Find Reactors’ Melted Uranium Fuel

#77

Post by scoggs »

whichdan wrote: post #72

If anyone's interested in related reading, there's a manga called Ichi-F[0] that walks through the daily life at Fukushima Daiichi. [0] https://kodanshacomics.com/series/ichi-f/

Wow, thank you! The art is pretty good overall and the story seems well done enough. There are 39 chapters according to where I found it to read online but MyAnimeList (MAL) says 24 chapters from 3 volumes.

More info on MAL here: https://myanimelist.net/manga/61341/1F__Fukushima_Daiichi_Ge...

Re: Six Years After Fukushima, Robots Finally Find Reactors’ Melted Uranium Fuel

#78

Post by baxtr »

baron816 wrote: post #44
wiz21c wrote: post #38

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... reminds us that nuclear kills much less than regular earthquakes, car accidents, or air pollution due to the burning of fossil fuels...

I’m not worried about how many people nuclear power kills every year. I’m worried about how many people it kills every hundred years. A major nuclear disaster, however unlikely, has the potential to kill millions of people and leave a big portion of the Earth uninhabitable for centuries. Just because we haven’t seen one on that scale yet, doesn’t mean we never will.

Uninhabitable? Maybe for humans. Wildlife grows back stronger:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/23/wildlife-returns-...

Re: Six Years After Fukushima, Robots Finally Find Reactors’ Melted Uranium Fuel

#79

Post by archgoon »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #66

> "... exotic space particles called muons " welph, that's my eyes rolling right out of my head. I mean really, "space particles"! The might as well call all metals "supernova remnants" -_-

Would you prefer for them to be referred to them as "Cosmic Rays" :) ? To be honest, "Space Particles" sounds less silly and more descriptive. It also emphasizes that they're not generating the muons themselves, but collecting them from space.

EDIT: Though I guess, now that I think of it, it's a bit unfair to refer to muons as 'exotic'. People will typically encounter thousands of them in a day [1].

[1] http://cosmic.lbl.gov/SKliewer/Cosmic_Rays/Muons.htm

[1] "Muons arrive at sea level with an average flux of about 1 muon per square centimeter per minute."

Re: Six Years After Fukushima, Robots Finally Find Reactors’ Melted Uranium Fuel

#80

Post by StanislavPetrov »

baxtr wrote: post #78
baron816 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not worried about how many people nuclear power kills every year. I’m worried about how many people it kills every hundred years. A major nuclear disaster, however unlikely, has the potential to kill millions of people and leave a big portion of the Earth uninhabitable for centuries. Just because we haven’t seen one on that scale yet, doesn’t mean we never will.

Uninhabitable? Maybe for humans. Wildlife grows back stronger: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/23/wildlife-returns-...

The fact that toxic radiation is less lethal than humans is an indictment of humans, not an endorsement of radiation.
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