
Fukushima's ground zero: No place for man or robot - kevindeasis
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-disaster-decommissioning-idUSKCN0WB2X5
======
mkesper
Recent Greenpeace article re Fukushima: The environmental impacts are already
becoming apparent, with studies showing:

\- High radiation concentrations in new leaves, and at least in the case of
cedar, in pollen;

\- apparent increases in growth mutations of fir trees with rising radiation
levels;

\- heritable mutations in pale blue grass butterfly populations and DNA-
damaged worms in highly contaminated areas, as well as apparent reduced
fertility in barn swallows;

\- decreases in the abundance of 57 bird species with higher radiation levels
over a four year study; and

\- high levels of caesium contamination in commercially important freshwater
fish; and radiological contamination of one of the most important ecosystems –
coastal estuaries.

[http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/press/releases/20...](http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/press/releases/2016/Fukushima-
nuclear-disaster-will-impact-forests-rivers-and-estuaries-for-hundreds-of-
years-warns-Greenpeace-report-/)

~~~
mapt
Coming out of an ecology program? And observing the Chernobyl data?

None of that is remotely as damaging to the natural environment as continued
human habitation of the area that has been evacuated. Cry not for the fishes
and birds, for they are better off with slight genetic damage than they are
with us.

The threshold at which people become uncomfortable about radiation is several
orders of magnitude lower than the threshold at which it causes population
decline in wild populations, and people cause declines and extirpations in
wild populations all the time.

~~~
morsch
So a rational ecology program should advocate irradiating wide swathes of
land?

Of course the people displaced from the area didn't disappear, they're
affecting wildlife somewhere else. Seems like mostly zero sum in that specific
regard.

~~~
theoh
There's a major question in ecology of how we feel about our "anthropocentric"
civilization. For many environmentally conscious thinkers it seems like a
world without humans would be preferable.

~~~
mapt
A world without humans would be _necessary_ to fulfill their goals of the
environment being unmolested by humans. We cannot live in perfect harmony.
That's not a thing.

At best, we can establish areas that look roughly like they used to look
before humans, but this is no less deliberate design than the styrofoam rocks
at the zoo, it's just on a different scale. Many such areas are, in fact,
better seen as zoos, because of their small size or limited variety. Most of
the productive arable land is predictably already being used for something by
somebody.

Personally, I'm a humanist. The worst things environmental devastation can do
to us are disrupt some of our services, like agricultural collapses; After
that environmentalism is mostly a romantic or novelty-based aesthetic, albeit
an attractive one. Pit it against human lives and human profit, and groups of
humans will nearly always make the same decision.

EDIT: Worth tacking on, for some perspective:
[https://xkcd.com/1338/](https://xkcd.com/1338/)

~~~
hemptemp
As much as i abhor commenting online do bear with me. You say that "We cannot
live in perfect harmony". That's not a thing", however what is this in
comparison to. Surely this would be comparative to the rest of the eco-system.
Animals make changes, they create habitats and dam rivers, however as it is
more rudimentary (sticks and holes in earth) we dont consider it a change to
the enviroment.

Creating our homes in a more ecological and recycleable way would be in
perfect harmony. The arguement is whether we should go further and drastically
change the enviroment, do we have the right as the dominant species on the
planet to abuse its resources for ourselves (as seen in the attached xkcd
whose figures roughly show the populations of mammals who we have artifically
inflated to such proportions for our dietray wants).

So if we changed our architechture and agriculture then yes we could live in
perfect sync and harmony, it's just that we wont.

~~~
jahewson
There is no such thing as "harmony" in nature. Species come and go, some
destroy their own habit, others drive their competitors to extinction. We do
need to be careful about how we use natural resources and that we don't change
our environment in a way that is detrimental to us. But understand that change
is the status quo for nature, that's especially easy to miss when it happens
on timescales longer than a human life, but happen it does.

------
taneq
I don't understand how "each robot has to be custom built for each building"
and "takes two years to build".

I mean, they don't need Atlas here. They just need a ruggedized remote control
car with a camera and a ton of lead plate on it.

~~~
TotesAThrowAway
Friend of BillinghamJ here.

We do build mock facilities and we have recently started working on the
Fukushima Daiichi inspections, and there is only so much I can actually say
but I'll share what I can. I'll explain what caused the failure in this part
and then I'll move onto the fun stuff in the next post (robots!).

In the past, the mock facilities we have made in the past were a quarter of a
full scale reactor, rather than a quarter scale reactor, if that makes any
sense at all.

Anyway back to Japan. I'm assuming people have a basic understanding of how
fission reactors work (Boiling Water Reactors if you are interested in doing
further reading).

To break the situation down, the cooling failed (believe it or not, diesel
generators don't work too well on water!) on reactors 1, 2 and 3, causing a
complete meltdown of the fuel rods. When cooling failed, all of the cooling
water was turned into steam, which in turn reacted with the released
radioactive isotopes creating hydrogen. I'm assuming people know mixing
hydrogen with oxygen is basically a recipe for an explosion, and that is
important for what happened next. They tried to vent the gases out to the
atmosphere to prevent the pressure vessel from exploding, but the hydrogen
went the wrong way and caused reactors 1 through to 3 to explode in various
places. I can't remember correctly (I think its reactor 3?) but the explosion
happened within the pressure vessel which is why there was a large
contamination breach. Because of this complete loss of control of the
reactors, and the meltdown currently happening, they flooded the whole system
with sea water and pumped as much out into storage as they can, but they lose
a lot of it out to the sea, hence the Americans whining about the radiation in
the Pacific. Now, the reactors are stable (ish) and they are continuing to
pump water in to stop them going critical again.

I'll move onto the robots when I get home in part two, but right now I need to
go have an argument with a lawn mower as my hair is getting unruly. The video
linked below explains more about the actual failure of the reactor:-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMaEjEWL6PU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMaEjEWL6PU)

Brb.

~~~
TotesAThrowAway
PART 2

So, ROVs.

We probably aren't going to use a ROV for our solution as it doesn't suit and
they're a pain in the arse quite frankly.

To start, I'll address the issue with the 'wires' failing. An American company
built a ROV that was heavily shielded and was driven via an umbilical.
Wireless is hard to use and autonomy is too hard to use as the reactor
conditions are unknown. The ROV was a good design and could survive the
radiation for a reasonable amount of time, however for whatever reason they
used PVC wire sheathes that break down under heavy radiation, and as a result
the wires touched and shorted the electronics out, rendering the ROV useless
and 'dead'.

In terms of why it takes so long and why we can't use an off the shelf
version, basically radiation is a bitch. At the base of the reactor vessel,
just above the corium, the radiation output is estimated to be around 3000
microsieverts per hour, that translates roughly to a human life expectancy of
around 6 seconds, give or take. This amount of radiation causes electronics to
fail (transistors commonly), and materials to break down. The breaking down of
materials caused the American ROV to die, and another example would be that it
can causes greases to harden, which stops motors working.

Reactors aren't big spacious areas either, so it's not like we can just deploy
a lead (lead weighs a metric shit'tonne) shielded tank to have a look, it's
just too big and cumbersome. We decided against using a ROV as it had to be
30kg or less, which is absolutely nothing once you bring in drilling packages
and the likes.

Also quite often you will be deploying through a hole between the size of your
fist up to just smaller than the diameter of your head, so that restricts you
hugely as well.

You also have material compatability. If you get something stuck you have to
be sure that it won't react and cause the reactor to become critical again,
which could happen in one of the reactors (can't go into more detail sorry).

One last major consideration as too why it takes so long to build and test a
ROV to suit. The reactors are under immense thermal stress, and metal likes to
bend and warp when it's heating/cooling. You have to build your solution
around the worst case scenario. An example would be we went into a boiler tube
trying to plug a 1 inch hole from 18m above it using a manipulator arm. That's
already hard on its own, but then we discovered the originally 7mm gap we were
aiming for was actually now as small as 3.5mm. Trying to develop ROVs and
remote solutions is really not easy, the best way I can put it is that this
line of work is an art, not a science. That's why it will probably take the
best part of a century I reckon to fix this problem.

~~~
x0x0

       That's why it will probably take the best part of a century I reckon to fix 
       this problem.
    

Just wow.

But a question -- you say you won't use a ROV. But you say wireless is hard
and autonomy is too hard. So that leaves what?

And thanks for taking the time to share.

~~~
TotesAThrowAway
The alternative and what is most commonly used for control, in the nuclear
industry, is a very long 'umbilical' (wire with loads of cores). A lot of
nuclear providers are against people using wireless as if you lose
connectivity and it gets stuck you are in trouble.

Also we are going to use a manipulator arm more than likely. Manipulator arms
are cheaper and more widely used in our industry.

~~~
effie
So its like a very long colonoscope that has camera on its end and can be
manipulated to turn around a corner?
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=colonoscope&iax=1&ia=images](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=colonoscope&iax=1&ia=images)

~~~
TotesAThrowAway
More like this minus the electronics:-
[http://www.lasersnake.co.uk/images/galleries/2b8q6hcombined-...](http://www.lasersnake.co.uk/images/galleries/2b8q6hcombined-3.jpg?width=800&height=600&shrink=true)

Your idea would be perfect if we were just doing an inspection, however we
have other work we will need to do down there which will require various
packages so it has to be somewhat bulkier.

------
ams6110
The treated water should probably be pumped onto tanker ships and taken to the
middle of the ocean for release. It would be so massively diluted as to be
harmless, and remove any chance for local contamination. It would be far safer
than leaving it in tanks on-site, which are subject to leaks, intentional
damage, etc.

~~~
retube
Yeah but who's gonna crew a tanker of highly irradiated water?

~~~
joeyo
The lowest bidder!

In all seriousness, radiation shielding (necessary thickness of metal, etc) is
quite well understood. It's probably not even an especially hazardous cargo
compared to what most tankers haul.

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sakopov
I'm curious if there is any research on purification of irradiated water. A
quick search took me here [1]. Couldn't find much else on this.

[1] [http://acselb-529643017.us-
west-2.elb.amazonaws.com/chem/243...](http://acselb-529643017.us-
west-2.elb.amazonaws.com/chem/243nm/program/view.php?obj_id=121787&terms=)

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xigency
I used to live here! Not in Fukushima exactly but in Aizu, and I've traveled
to Fukushima City. The closest I've been to the reactor is probably 40 miles
away from the train in Koriyama.

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hasenj
Am I correct in assuming that the cost of "fire fighting" the situation far
outweighs the value of the energy generated from the plant?

~~~
Symmetry
Unclear. In terms of deaths the number caused by Fukushima is comparable to an
equivalent coal plant[1] and we still use coal plants for some reason so the
consensus seems to be that the electricity is worth the cost. I'd guess that
the Fukushima cleanup and containment costs are going to be small compared to
the human costs. As to the cost of the evacuation, that might very well be
enough to zero out the economic value.

[1][http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2013/12/fukushima-
vs...](http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2013/12/fukushima-vs-coal.html)

~~~
hasenj
I meant the effort required to clean up the situation and turn off the plant.

------
mtahaalam
Indeed!

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HillaryBriss
It's interesting that, in Japan's political environment, the local fishing
industry has enough clout to veto TEPCO's proposal to allow radioactive water
to leak into the ocean near the site.

It's also interesting that the fishing industry, which is usually (correctly)
assigned blame for depleting fish stocks is, in this case, protecting fish
habitat.

~~~
Pyxl101
They deplete fishing stocks by fishing. They don't want people worried that
their fish are contaminated, and they don't want their stock depleted by a
different cause than fishing.

~~~
HillaryBriss
Yeah. Makes sense.

I guess nuclear contamination is in a different category than say, pollution
from coal burning power plants, which add a lot of mercury to the environment
which then ends up in high level ocean predators like tuna. The fishing
industry doesn't seem to have the ability to stop that kind of pollution.

Maybe it's because many sea food consumers people casually ignore mercury
levels in fish they eat. Or maybe it's because the Japanese seafood supply
chain is well enough managed and regulated that people really know where a
piece of fish in a market actually came from. Perhaps people carry geiger
counters into the supermarkets there. I don't know.

~~~
nitrogen
The documentary "The Cove" has a side story about mercury in Japanese seafood
from some places.

------
marze
The robot problem is simply a lack of imagination. Just set up a long drill,
like an oil rig, aimed sideways into the reactor. Drill six inch hole with
cutting torch drill head, then insert equally long periscope. No rad hard
electronics needed.

~~~
mikeash
Cutting a big new hole in the structure holding the nasty stuff inside doesn't
seem like a very good idea to me.

~~~
marze
Give me a break, the structures are already full of holes. That's why the ice
dam is needed.

