
Six Years After Fukushima, Robots Finally Find Reactors’ Melted Uranium Fuel - htiek
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/science/japan-fukushima-nuclear-meltdown-fuel.html?referer=https://www.google.com/
======
geon
> [https://youtu.be/c5hQ6WlioRE](https://youtu.be/c5hQ6WlioRE)

This has to be the worst possible way of sharing information; a video of 2
still images and a computer voice reading a text.

Right up there with images inside a word document, inside an email.

~~~
petepete
YouTube really should be detecting and pushing them to the bottom of search
results. Downvoting doesn't appear to have much of an effect.

~~~
jimcsharp
I believe likes and dislikes on Youtube both count as "interaction" as far as
rankings are concerned.

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hexane360
"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.

~~~
kurthr
Chernobyl is still in Ukrane (near the boarder with Belarus) and not Russia
(yet). At the time it was part of the Soviet Union, but Ukraine has always
been a bread basket of Central Europe.

Fundamentally, Chernobyl is a much larger (order of magnitude) event with 6
tons of radioactive material burned and released. Frankly, for all the
coverage Fukushima gets, it's amazing that you rarely hear about the
associated tsunami and the damage it caused... 22k direct casualties with 2.5k
still missing, 230k people still displaced in 2015 with ~400k structures
destroyed.

~~~
ifdefdebug
> 230k people still displaced in 2015

The displacement is mostly due to radioactive contamination still being high
in several zones around Fukushima.

The tsunami was a huge catastrophe but it's over. There is no breaking news to
get coverage.

Fukushima on the other hand is an ongoing disaster producing news from time to
time which, naturally, get coverage.

~~~
kurthr
No, they are separate. Only 100k people are still displaced by Fukushima
covering an area of over 400km2.

[http://fukushimaontheglobe.com/the-earthquake-and-the-
nuclea...](http://fukushimaontheglobe.com/the-earthquake-and-the-nuclear-
accident/evacuation-orders-and-restricted-areas)

Sendai is some 50km away from Fukushima and the population center is well
outside the evacuation area. Tamura and Minamisoma are the only cities within
it.

The tsunami destroyed 400k structures and decimated Sendai, which (note that
the figures in the linked article are in 10s of people and structures as
indicated at the top of the figures). Some 300k people and 100k homes were
within the inundation, ~25% of the local population.

[http://tohokugeo.jp/articles/e-contents16.html](http://tohokugeo.jp/articles/e-contents16.html)

In the Fukushima evacuation area the majority of the surface is less than 4x
background radition ~1uSv/hr. In discussing an ongoing disaster please look at
this video:

[https://youtu.be/G_0rQ9hnP84?t=477](https://youtu.be/G_0rQ9hnP84?t=477)

[http://www.world-nuclear-
news.org/RS_Contamination_dropping_...](http://www.world-nuclear-
news.org/RS_Contamination_dropping_in_evacuation_zone_0706131.html)

[https://xkcd.com/radiation/](https://xkcd.com/radiation/)

------
JonoW
Does 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

~~~
nielsbot
That's basically what they say at the end of the article:

“I’ve been a robotic engineer for 30 years, and we’ve never faced anything as
hard as this,” said Shinji Kawatsuma, director of research and development at
the center. “This is a divine mission for Japan’s robot engineers.”

~~~
themodelplumber
> This is a divine mission for Japan’s robot engineers

That is so cool. I'd love to see some kind of "lessons learned" summary from
the robotics people.

~~~
justinjlynn
Unfortunately, I'd imagine the vast majority of the helpful information
learned will be kept a proprietary secret.

~~~
adrianN
I could imagine that shielding electronics from radiation could fall under
military secret.

~~~
justinjlynn
These days, once you get to the level where you can afford to develop them in
the first place, there really isn't that much of a difference.

------
eric-hu
I long believed that nuclear power was the only energy source cleaner than
fossil fuels and scalable enough to meet the energy demands of the world.
While that might still be true in some sense, I now believe that humanity
isn't ready for nuclear power.

Besides the Fukushima and Chernobyl type issues with organizations skimping on
design, there's still an outstanding problem of nuclear waste storage. The
current nuclear power statistics haven't factored in a major waste storage
incident because one hasn't happened yet. Until we've witnessed multiple
lifecycles of nuclear fuel consumption to full waste breakdown, the safety
stats could still swing against nuclear power. Maybe all it'd take is a
terrorist incident involving nuclear waste. From what I understand, breeder
reactors can vastly reduce the quantity of a power plant's waste and produce
waste with a much shorter half life. This isn't widely implemented or shared
because that technology can also be used to produce weapons grade material. I
think humanity will be ready if/when we can sort out our differences without
violence and greed/corruption are no longer problems for most large orgs.

Additionally, renewables seem to have better scalability today than they did
in the 90's when I formed my initial opinions. Right now, the worst case
situation with a renewable power source is probably a large dam bursting.
That's certainly possible due to corruption or terrorism too. If the three
gorges dam suddenly burst, that could take out most of Shanghai. For most
other renewables, the potential worst case is much milder though.

~~~
gizmo
I agree that renewables are a very good alternative to nuclear power, but in
practice moving away from nuclear means doubling down on coal. The problems
with nuclear are political, but the alternatives to nuclear power are mired in
political conflict as well.

As for your dam bursting scenario, something like that actually happened in
the 70s when the Banqiao Dam burst. Nearly 200.000 people died. Fukushima had
0 radiation deaths.

~~~
RobAley
You can't really say 0 deaths, because no one knows. We don't have good
epidemiological models for wide-spread low-level dispersal such as was seen at
Fukushima, we already know incidences of cancer and gene mutation don't scale
linearly with exposure at low levels. There are also associated deaths from
psychological factors of those who were evacuated, lost land / business etc.
which will only become apparent in years to come.

Dams do have the potential for massive loss of life as you say, and they also
suffer from the problem of massive centralisation of capacity (unlike e.g.
solar or wind). On the smaller upside, the models related to fatalities are
pretty well understood.

Perhaps an instant move away from nuclear may need coal, although here in the
UK it's gas that has been taking up the slack while the government dilly-dally
on whether to build out new nuclear or invest in renewables research
(successfully doing neither).

I see over the longer term renewables coming up as nuclear is naturally
retired at the end of the current plant's lifespan. Solar is now cheaper than
coal to built-out in many places, there are other impediments but (generally)
lack of public support isn't one of them (compared to coal/nuclear).

~~~
gizmo
Deaths resulting from psychological factors involving those who were evacuated
count when it comes to nuclear energy but not when it comes to dam failures? I
don't think this kind of double standard is reasonable.

Besides, I'm pretty sure you just copied the argument about low level exposure
from the Fukushima disaster wikipedia page, but you conveniently left out the
next sentence: "given the uncertain health effects of low-dose radiation,
cancer deaths cannot be ruled out.[11] However, no discernible increase in the
rate of cancer deaths is expected."

Scare-mongering about nuclear radiation doesn't help anybody but the coal and
gas industry.

~~~
RobAley
I never said that such deaths form dam failures didn't count. The only
reference I made to dams is that the model (physically traumatic & psych-
related death) is well understood. Deaths due to low-level, widely dispersed
radiation is not.

I'm afraid you were wrong to be "pretty sure" that I copied the argument from
Wikipedia, I haven't read that page (until you pointed it out now). My comment
comes from what I've picked up working for 10 years in epidemiology at Oxford.
I didn't "conveniently" leave out the next sentence, and I wouldn't have
quoted it anyway as its effectively tosh. There is no discernible increase
expected on current models, but the current models are accepted (by most
experts) not be useful predictors, as described in my initial post.

It's not "scare-mongering", it's being open to scientific discussion and
exploration. Blind-adherence to your view-point doesn't help anyone but the
nuclear industry.

Let's have open and honest debate. Even when that means we say "we don't
know".

------
rtkwe
Kind 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.

~~~
jjoonathan
> 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.

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

~~~
collectively
You know if you stopped smoking in your early twenties they’re not likely to
affect you when 63. So this is more like smoking crack in your twenties.

------
whichdan
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/](https://kodanshacomics.com/series/ichi-f/)

~~~
scoggs
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...](https://myanimelist.net/manga/61341/1F__Fukushima_Daiichi_Genshiryoku_Hatsudensho_Annaiki?q=ichi-f)

------
jenga22
I wonder what they do once the robot sees the uranium? I mean the robot itself
is now heavily contaminated. Do they just leave the robot down there? Or do
they somehow decontaminate it so they can use it again?

~~~
prebrov
Robots just kept dying in there all those years [1]. I reckon they are
disposable, in effect.

[1]: [http://mashable.com/2017/03/03/fukushima-robots-
fail/](http://mashable.com/2017/03/03/fukushima-robots-fail/)

~~~
vidarh
That's the primary reason it's taken so long, as far as I understand. It's not
that it was hard to find the location, per se, but that the robots didn't last
long enough.

------
ukulele
> 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?

~~~
NikolaeVarius
Probably nowhere near as dangerous but I think its interesting.
[https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/in-the-shadow-of-
cherno...](https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/in-the-shadow-of-chernobyl-
stalker)

~~~
trhway
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".

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

~~~
trhway
It wasn't war crimes, it was participation in a civil war fighting armed
volunteer and regular forces of the other side.

------
wiz21c
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties)

reminds us that nuclear kills much less than regular earthquakes, car
accidents, or air pollution due to the burning of fossil fuels...

~~~
baron816
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.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Ok, let's do a Fermi-like estimation.

Estimates on the number of deaths related to coal generation vary from around
13,00 to 30,000 per year in the US [1] and 500,000 per year in China [2]. The
current world population is 7.6 billion, of which the US and China account for
approximately 1.8 billion people. Let's round the coal-related death rate way
down for easy math: 10,000 per year in the US and 100,000 per year in China.
Then, multiply that rate by the world's population, and you have, let's say
450,000 coal-related deaths per year worldwide. This is a really squishy
number, but we only need approximations here.

You were concerned about how many people would die every hundred years from
nuclear disasters, so let's see if we can work today's 450,000 per year
estimated deaths backwards for the last hundred years.

The world population was somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.8 billion people
in 1917. Assuming linear growth (I know, I know) and a strong r-value
correlation for population vs. coal-related deaths (arguable, but again, Fermi
estimate), we have to sum .00006 * population from 1.8 billion -> 7.6 billion,
and we end up with approximately 28 million people.

Which is to say, if we could gather up all the deaths, worldwide, from coal,
over the last hundred years, and convert it into a single disaster, it would
kill the entire city of Shanghai, and New York for the apple on top.

That would have to be one hell of a nuclear disaster.

Now, there are arguments to be made that the energy we've received from coal
has also powered hospitals and technology which have saved or improved
people's lives. There are also arguments to be made that the side-effects of
coal (hospitalization, environmental disasters) cause the death toll to
absolutely pale by comparison.

And again, I've rounded these numbers down at every stage of the calculation.

[1]:
[http://www.catf.us/resources/publications/files/The_Toll_fro...](http://www.catf.us/resources/publications/files/The_Toll_from_Coal.pdf)
[pdf]; it includes its own numbers, at the 13,000 estimate, and the EPA's, at
14,000 to 36,000 range.

[2]: [https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-
ener...](https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-
source.html) (blog, but includes lots of supporting links; I'm open to
alternative sources that give vastly different estimates).

~~~
nl
There are very few people who are anti-nuclear power who are pro-coal.

Even ignoring renewables, gas solves many of the worst problems with coal.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Sure, but even natural gas and rooftop solar have higher rates of death per
year than nuclear. (In my second link above.)

In a world in which we must choose the lesser of evils for energy, nuclear is
among the least evils, yet faces the greatest overall public resistance to new
installations.

~~~
nl
I dunno - even that source itself says that the death rates from solar would
fall using better construction methods. It also notes (in the case of wind)
that increased take up is associated with lower death rates ("Wind power
proponent and author Paul Gipe estimated in Wind Energy Comes of Age that the
mortality rate for wind power from 1980–1994 was 0.4 deaths per terawatt-hour.
Paul Gipe’s estimate as of end 2000 was 0.15 deaths per TWh, a decline
attributed to greater total cumulative generation.")

I'd also note that the very low rates of death from nuclear power do not
appear to include construction deaths, which are the only source of death
measured from wind and solar.

------
spyspy
Non-mobile link: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/science/japan-
fukushima-n...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/science/japan-fukushima-
nuclear-meltdown-fuel.html)

------
MilnerRoute
If I'm reading the article right, the robots actually made this discovery back
in July.

------
chiefalchemist
As seen as another HN thread, seemingly relevant here as well:

[http://www.sciencealert.com/new-composite-material-
reduces-h...](http://www.sciencealert.com/new-composite-material-reduces-
helium-damage-fusion-reactors)

------
robinwassen
The YouTube video with images of the core that nytimes linked, is one of those
spam news videos using text-to-speech.

~~~
themodelplumber
I was wondering about that. Was about to adjust my false-positive filter for
YouTube click spam. I mean, if the NYT links to it...

------
uptown
Early on there was considerable talk about the contaminating impact this might
have on the Pacific. Has anything come of that?

~~~
scott_karana
Water sampling happens frequently at various points near the reactor, all of
which showed levels at expected bounds to date.

Most of the scary charts were fake:
[https://www.snopes.com/photos/technology/fukushima.asp](https://www.snopes.com/photos/technology/fukushima.asp)

------
civilian
What is the article talking about when they say "radiation-hardened
materials"? What kind of materials might that be?

~~~
perlgeek
I don't know what they did in this particular instance, but basically there
are two things you can do: shield, or in the case of electronics, use larger
parts.

The smaller some piece of electronics is, the smaller the charges in there
are, and the easier it is to introduce errors with ionizing radiation.

~~~
_ph_
And the design of the electronics might help with radiation tolerance.
Computation paths could be redundant to detect/eliminate bit flips due to
radiaton.

(Some server Power cpus seem to run parallel in pairs, comparing the output at
critical parts to detect cpu errors)

~~~
rurban
Basically the same as in space exploration. Also running at very low MHz.

------
exabrial
What causes a robots electronics to go bad in radioactive environments?

------
millisecond
Web link not bypassing paywall for me, anyone else? Or am I in some
experimental cohort? :)

~~~
jwilk
It worked for me. Anyway, here's an archived copy:

[https://archive.is/jQlRG](https://archive.is/jQlRG)

------
SiempreViernes
> "... 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" -_-

~~~
archgoon
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](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."

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
Aren't muons terrestrial particles created by cosmic ray impacts on the
atmosphere, though?

~~~
archgoon
Well, yes; but calling them "exotic-in-the-sense-we-don't-talk-about-them-
very-much-even-though-they-pass-by-all-the-time-that-got-created-when-an-
actual-space-particle-that-wasn't-that-exotic-like-a-proton-or-helium-atom-
hit-the-atmosphere particles called muons" doesn't quite roll off the tongue.
:)

They ultimately (and not in the we're all space dust sense, more like 2.2
microseconds ago sense) are caused by interactions with particles from outer
space, so calling them space particles, isn't _that_ bad. :) But yeah; it's
does elide that aspect of them.

------
AlleyTrotter
SO! it never made it to China LOL

------
gnu8
Why in fuck is this a link to mobile?

