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Tepco, the utility company tasked with overseeing cleanup and waste processing for the former Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, hit another snag this week. Last month, we reported on new findings about Reactor #2 that showed it was far more radioactive inside than previously measured. At the time, we noted that Tepco was working on a new robot that could handle up to 73 sieverts of radiation, but the measured level of 530 sieverts vastly exceeded that tolerance.
Now, Tepco has admitted that repeated robot failure is hampering its plan to search the bottom of the reactor, and find the estimated 600 tons of fuel and debris that may have poured out of the reactor and into the concrete lining below it. Initial attempts to see into Reactor #2 via robotic probe have all failed. We’ve only been able to estimate contamination levels by checking the amount of interference in the video feed the robot relays. The new hardened robot built by Toshiba and meant to give Tepco a much-improved ability to survey the damage reactor died 5x faster than expected and stalled 10 feet from the grate it needed to inspect.
In the wake of this setback, Naohiro Masuda, president of the Fukushima Daiichi Decommissioning, has called for imaginative thinking. “We should think out of the box so we can examine the bottom of the core and how melted fuel debris spread out,” Masuda told reporters.
Robots have been dying in Fukushima reactors since the disaster, but this is a higher-profile failure. The new robot Toshiba built (it’s been described as scorpion-like) was meant to solve this problem. The fact that it failed so quickly just underscores how much trouble Tepco is likely to have in further improving its design.
Read more here. (Extreme Tech)
Now, Tepco has admitted that repeated robot failure is hampering its plan to search the bottom of the reactor, and find the estimated 600 tons of fuel and debris that may have poured out of the reactor and into the concrete lining below it. Initial attempts to see into Reactor #2 via robotic probe have all failed. We’ve only been able to estimate contamination levels by checking the amount of interference in the video feed the robot relays. The new hardened robot built by Toshiba and meant to give Tepco a much-improved ability to survey the damage reactor died 5x faster than expected and stalled 10 feet from the grate it needed to inspect.
In the wake of this setback, Naohiro Masuda, president of the Fukushima Daiichi Decommissioning, has called for imaginative thinking. “We should think out of the box so we can examine the bottom of the core and how melted fuel debris spread out,” Masuda told reporters.
Robots have been dying in Fukushima reactors since the disaster, but this is a higher-profile failure. The new robot Toshiba built (it’s been described as scorpion-like) was meant to solve this problem. The fact that it failed so quickly just underscores how much trouble Tepco is likely to have in further improving its design.
Read more here. (Extreme Tech)
