Robots come to the rescue after Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

CBS News - 60 Minutes ^ | Nov 25, 2018 | Lesley Stahl

[thoughtomator]

or perhaps they are aware of things like thorium reactors which are not subject to meltdown risk

[Conan the Librarian]

It is true that more folks died in Ted Kennedy’s car than at Three Mile Island.

But, we actually know very little about the Sun. Just look what happens with the current minimum. Should it prove to be long lived, people will die.

[Tilting]

Nuke bomb blasts are a ‘cleaner burn’ of uranium/plutonium and a one time event (only about 2% of 141 pounds of uranium used, fissioned in Little Boy 2,000ft over Hiroshima).

Nuke plants fission uranium/plutonium over and over again for at least a year to the point the fuel rods have to be removed because fission byproducts begin to interfere with the fission process. This compared to a one time burn or fission during a nuke bomb blast.

Multiple burns/fissioning, keeps creating and adding to the dirty fuel rods’ byproducts totals i.e. cesium, plutonium, iodine, etc., 200 or so manmade byproducts all radioactive.

Worse, spent fuel rods which have reached their usefulness for core fissioning are moved to storage pools. One typical spent fuel storage pool will contain more radiocesium than created in all the aboveground nuke tests by all countries combined.

Nuke reactor meltdowns are worse than nuke bomb blasts with nuke spent fuel pool being the most dangerous of them all if ever even one catches on fire to release its radioactive contents.

Cancers rates rising since man began fissioning uranium shows the result of man adding to background radiation levels.

[Lurker]

“Cancers rates rising since man began fissioning uranium shows the result of man adding to background radiation levels.”

Correlation does not equal causation.

L

[logi_cal869]

At least Jane had the looks and got paid to act.

[ssaftler]

At least Jane had the looks and got paid to act.

I think you misspelled the third to last word above. Shouldn't the "p" be replaced by an "l"?

[logi_cal869]

My bad. Sucker for redheads, I am.

[SaveFerris]

They were in a safety area with the Toyota(?) guy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nemYBeT4aQY

[Billthedrill]

It's an interesting engineering challenge, no doubt about that. For the Reactor One meltdown, no excuse. Unlike the other two, it had a purely passive emergency cooling system that not only could have taken them through it, but was doing so until it was shut off because it was working too well, and when the power went it couldn't be turned back on. Reactor Four was already cold iron, so the only threat was leakage from the storage tanks where the fuel rods had been deposited. When that building blew from hydrogen leakage from Reactor Three there were a lot of truly shocked people.

James Mahaffey, Professor Emeritus of Nuclear Engineering, calls the entire sequence of events "inexcusable" in his Atomic Accidents, which is highly recommended. TEP (Tokyo Electric Power) had been told about the inadequacy of the seawall and the vulnerability of the emergency generators on numerous inspections. And but for the unfortunate placement of one power distribution panel they'd have gotten away with the thing. And but for the unfortunate timing of the first hydrogen explosion they'd still have gotten away with it. When that made a timely approach to the power panel impossible, the meltdowns were inevitable.

So where from here? A Chernobyl-style sarcophagus won't stop the groundwater contamination, that's a whole new realm of recovery. The ice barriers were a really innovative idea but they appear to have failed. There may be no other choice but to pump the contaminated cooling water into the ocean and hope for the best, securing the solid corium and other contaminated solids with physical barriers. They may need to go to bedrock to pull that off, and this in a highly active seismic zone. It's a very formidable engineering challenge indeed.

[logi_cal869]

The irony of Three Mile Island occurring 12 days after release of this movie is still rather incredible.

As is the backstory on TMI as well (Jimmy Carter almost walked into a plume).

Then there’s the Pepsi Syndrome...

https://www.hulu.com/watch/17691aec-0a21-4ec4-ab00-a0e4450d581c

[logi_cal869]

“Pepsi Syndrome” begins at 12:30. fyi

[SaveFerris]

Ah I am not signed up for Hulu so can’t get it.

I tried YouTube - I’ll have to look around - thanks.

[roadcat]

Most of the US explosions were done on the WEST COAST of the US. Everyone there should be dead.

Hmmn. Dead,... or gone mad. A former conservative area of the country gone liberal after nuclear bomb testing. Cause and effect?

[logi_cal869]

I tried to source it elsewhere but could not. An NBC link produced a “no longer available” message. Hulu does have a free trial.

Hulu actually has every SNL season from the first. Pretty amazing (didn’t know that until tonight; I miss the old stuff).

[Tilting]

Interesting how the Daiichi disaster is rewritten as time goes on. Unit 1, the oldest and smallest reactor was already leaking steam before the tsunami hit. A couple of minutes of violent shaking and the plumbing was displaced in all the reactors before any seawater damage. Depends on which reporting you want to believe. Nuke industry would like to blame the meltdowns on the tsunami because building for a tsunami is doable just construct on higher ground. Quakes, not so much. That entire coastline area dropped 3 feet during the quake beside moving 8 feet laterally. As typical, the sea receded hundreds of yards exposing the ocean floor and starved the intake pumps of cooling water for the working cores, then the tsunami surged in. Unit 4's spent fuel storage pools boiled away enough to expose the tops of fuel rods and fuel racks which the pool was overloaded as the entire reactor core was moved temporarily into that storage pool while a reactor core shroud replacement had just been completed. Unit 3 was running a partial load of MOX fuel at the time. MOX is recycled from spent fuel rods and contains about 3% plutonium besides uranium and burns a bit hotter and is more unstable needing more control rods to keep it in check. With the spectacular explosion at Unit 3, brings the definition of unstable. Unit 2's foundation cracked and had to be plugged after spilling radioactive water directly into the manmade harbor. And Unit 2 had a blowout panel mysteriously removed but that prevented a hydrogen explosion because it could vent out that hole. Interesting that radiocesium can be differentiated as being from Fukushima Daiichi when found in California grapes harvested for wine making. Might want to avoid any wines from there post 2011. Daiichi was not the only nuke plant to suffer. Just down the coast is nuke plant Dani. It had its own emergencies but that is another story. Japan, the last place where you should be building nuke plants.

[Tilting]

Utah has a high rate of excotic cancer cases occuring in locals otherwise known as ‘downwinders’ of nuke tests. In Nevada you could view and witness mushroom clouds just outside of Las Vegas. Use Google Earth to view the many scars and nuke potholes in the western test areas.

[Pontiac]

Cancers rates rising since man began fissioning uranium shows the result of man adding to background radiation levels.

A logical fallacy

You can not connect fission of uranium to human cancer rates.

Cancer can be caused by any number of things other than radiation.

The most likely cause (provable) for cancer rates to rise is humans are living longer. The older you get the more likely you are to get cancer.

[Pontiac]

I think you know how to do a Google search for “Chernobyl mutations”.

I never use Google

You should want me to look at articles you supply.

[SFConservative]

LOL!! I’m sure that’s what he was thinking ...

[chimera]

The contaminated water currently being held onsite contains mainly tritium, which is a relatively innocuous radionuclide. It emits a beta particle of extremely low energy compared to typical beta emissions. It has a biological half-life of 10 days in humans, so even if you ingest some it gets pooped out pretty fast. And don't fall for the organically-bound tritium (OBT) FUD. OBT is formed in the environment much less frequently than HTO (water). While the accumulation factor for OBT is higher that HTO, there is less of it around to be taken up into the food chain.

Muon imaging of the three damaged RPVs seem to show complete removal of core materials from their usual position, but there is no form evidence of any kind of significant melt-through.