Nuke Crisis : Level 7 on overall impact

[WetEV]

I'm a bit more than halfway thru this 25 minute video that I recently learned about: http://www.aljazeera...

From Al Jazeera. Owned by the government of Qatar. Funded by oil.

I'm ... sure it is ... honest and ... unbiased... surely. ... Completely... Right.

[RegGuheert]

It seems the radiation levels inside the partially-melted-down reactor cores at Fukushima are above 500 Sieverts/hr. At that level, it seems robots have a life expectancy of only about two hours.

As a result, it may be quite some time before the cleanup operations inside the damaged reactors can commence.

[LeftieBiker]

I believe the biggest problem is that any imaging system currently in use gets burned out by the radiation in less than two hours. Someone needs to invent a CCD that uses a ceramic chip.

[RegGuheert]

I believe the biggest problem is that any imaging system currently in use gets burned out by the radiation in less than two hours. Someone needs to invent a CCD that uses a ceramic chip.

What's curious is that somehow they managed to clean up the mess inside Three Mile Island thirty years ago via remote control. It seems the focus today is on autonomy, but perhaps machines which have all their electronics in a remote location are what is needed instead for this type of disaster.

Or is Three Mile Island somehow significantly different? Perhaps the crane systems inside the Fukushima reactor buildings are not still intact?

[LeftieBiker]

Perhaps the crane systems inside the Fukushima reactor buildings are not still intact?

I don't think that anything inside the buildings works, aside from a few water pipes.

[2011RedLeaf]

I believe the biggest problem is that any imaging system currently in use gets burned out by the radiation in less than two hours. Someone needs to invent a CCD that uses a ceramic chip.

We just need to go back in technology about 30 years. AFAIK, old video cameras used some sort of a tube, similar to an old radio with tubes instead of transistors.
Other wise, it would seem lead impregnated glass or a fiber-optic input (similar to the old fashioned colonoscopies where the doctor's nose got progressively closer to the patient's backside) to the CCD chip should work.
What did the Hubble use to protect its imaging electronics from the radiation of outer space since launch in 1990?

[Reddy]

Here's another article about how to dispose of the tritium-tainted water (after cesium, strontium, and other radioactive stuff is removed). There is realistically NO other rational choice besides ocean disposal. Evaporating just wastes energy and it will still rain out in the ocean. Dumping it on the ground does the same thing. Hmmm, maybe they can sell it to US fracking companies so they can deep well inject it "safely" just like all the other fracking fluids.
https://www.voanews.com/amp/japan-fukus ... 95414.html

[edatoakrun]

Fears of another Fukushima as Tepco plans to restart world's biggest nuclear plant

Consent given to turn reactors at the massive Kashiwazaki-kariwa plant back on, but Japanese worry over active fault lines and mismanagement

...When all seven of its reactors are in operation, Kashiwazaki-kariwa generates 8.2m kilowatts of electricity – enough to power 16m households. Occupying 4.2 sq km of land along the Japan Sea coast, it is the biggest nuclear power plant in the world.

But today, the reactors at Kashiwazaki-kariwa are idle. The plant in Niigata prefecture, about 140 miles (225km) north-west of the capital, is the nuclear industry’s highest-profile casualty of the nationwide atomic shutdown that followed the March 2011 triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi.

The company at the centre of the disaster has encountered anger over its failure to prevent the catastrophe, its treatment of tens of thousands of evacuated residents and its haphazard attempts to clean up its atomic mess.

Now, the same utility, Tokyo Electric Power [Tepco], is attempting to banish its Fukushima demons with a push to restart two reactors at Kashiwazaki-kariwa, one of its three nuclear plants. Only then, it says, can it generate the profits it needs to fund the decommissioning of Fukushima Daiichi and win back the public trust it lost in the wake of the meltdown...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... lear-plant

[LeftieBiker]

Just to be really clear: the plant they want to restart is in a completely different location than the Fukushima plant? Not another building on the same site?

[cwerdna]

Just to be really clear: the plant they want to restart is in a completely different location than the Fukushima plant?

Looks like it.

A quick check for Kashiwazaki-kariwa on Google Maps points to https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tepco ... 38.5955861.

Fukushima Daiichi is at https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tepco ... 41.0280783. You can see MANY tanks used to hold contaminated water.