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Plutonium is Forever

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11–20 of 100 posts

Re: Plutonium is Forever

#11
post #4

The plant should have been dismantled, flooded, and buried within 24 hours of the emergency generators going down. They knew how bad it was/is, this all could have been prevented.

Of course, the infrastructure in the entire region had been destroyed by the earthquake + tsunami, making the simple task of transporting hundreds of tons of sand and concrete a herculean task...

Re: Plutonium is Forever

#12
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cant dismantle a plant that still generates residual heat while a used fuel pool is on fire nearby. Its just too dangerous a place for humans to be. What should they have done? Sent Asimo?

Just note that robots don't work either, because particle radiation has a nasty way of flipping bits stored in memory. In the presence of a strong beta ray source, you can treat sram and dram as good sources of truly random data. :)

There are of course ways to shield from that (as illustrated by spacecraft and common military electronics), but nuclear station damage control robotics is perhaps too niche application to be implemented.

Re: Plutonium is Forever

#13
Fix problems early and often.

I currently work at Japanese company in San Jose, but I don't see this type of behavior. The caveat is that I've only worked for a year here, so I may not be exposed yet.

I'd really like to know if Japanese society looks down on people who have embarrassed themselves. The executives must have a reason to prevent embarrassment and risk lives.

Re: Plutonium is Forever

#14
post #3

The plutonium was only found in trace amounts comparable to the amounts left behind by nearby nuclear weapons tests: http://mitnse.com/2011/03/30/news-updates/

In disaster management, you need to go big early. Start getting several projects under way, so if any of them are needed they can jump into effect as soon as the need is clear. Hopefully the contamination is minor, but we already know there's likely to be some significant cesium contamination for a while now, and Japan should have half a dozen task forces starting with the assumption that technology X will deal with the contamination, and figuring out what they need to do to implement it.

Re: Plutonium is Forever

#15
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just note that robots don't work either, because particle radiation has a nasty way of flipping bits stored in memory. In the presence of a strong beta ray source, you can treat sram and dram as good sources of truly random data. :)

There are of course ways to shield from that (as illustrated by spacecraft and common military electronics), but nuclear station damage control robotics is perhaps too niche application to be implemented.

As I understand it, canadian CANDU reactors use a robotic system to perform online refueling. They also use heavy water as a moderator, and burn unrefined uranium / [can] spent fuel from other reactors pretty impressive machines I think.

Re: Plutonium is Forever

#16
Now I'm starting to get worried. This has been up for 2 hours, and typically the "atomic trolls" would have at least 5-6 comments up about how all of this is nothing to worry about. So I guess this is truly bad.

Re: Plutonium is Forever

#18
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just note that robots don't work either, because particle radiation has a nasty way of flipping bits stored in memory. In the presence of a strong beta ray source, you can treat sram and dram as good sources of truly random data. :)

There are of course ways to shield from that (as illustrated by spacecraft and common military electronics), but nuclear station damage control robotics is perhaps too niche application to be implemented.

FNAL, BNL, CERN ...and KEK all use radhard electronics (obviously not everywhere), admittedly on the fringes of your illustrating application areas. Combined, that is already quite a large area, so to my mind parts for tough (damage) control robotics isn't such a niche.

But true, small production runs and spares is a real issue (actually, by the time they are really used, they are already obsolete -- but this is why you have upgrade plans :).

Re: Plutonium is Forever

#19
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are of course ways to shield from that (as illustrated by spacecraft and common military electronics), but nuclear station damage control robotics is perhaps too niche application to be implemented.

As I understand it, canadian CANDU reactors use a robotic system to perform online refueling. They also use heavy water as a moderator, and burn unrefined uranium / [can] spent fuel from other reactors pretty impressive machines I think.

FRAMATOME/AREVA/etc. also. But they don't always work well, as the history of industrial robotic arms from the nuclear business tells us...

Re: Plutonium is Forever

#20
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are of course ways to shield from that (as illustrated by spacecraft and common military electronics), but nuclear station damage control robotics is perhaps too niche application to be implemented.

As I understand it, canadian CANDU reactors use a robotic system to perform online refueling. They also use heavy water as a moderator, and burn unrefined uranium / [can] spent fuel from other reactors pretty impressive machines I think.

Everybody uses a robotic system for refueling - really it's just a crane that seals to each fuel rod tube cap.

The problem with CANDU is that you can't operate them with a fast enough fuel cycle to produce weapons grade Pu so they are only economic in nuclear countries that aren't interested in weapons.

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