Robot begins removing Fukushima nuclear plant’s melted fuel.
Robot begins removing Fukushima nuclear plant’s melted fuel.
Nuclear fuel in the reactor cores melted after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant's cooling systems to fail
Robot clearly never watched the ending of Fallout 3 about letting the humans do it instead.
Or let a super mutant do it for you if you've bought the add-on
Without the addon there was a robot companion that would refuse to go in, just like Fawkes does before you get the dlc. After you get the dlc both companions will go in, and be fine afterwards, because radiation doesn't affect them.
Much like Fawkes the robot companion said some BS about not robbing you of your destiny before you install that particular dlc.
Human Robots
How radioactive is the robot afterwards?
That kinda depends on exactly what it is removed and how. Being exposed to radiation doesn't make you radioactive. Ingesting radioactive particles will kinda make you radioactive until those particles reach their end of life and fission. I would be surprised if the robot is actually radioactive once it is done, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that the structural integrity of the robot has been compromised due to exposure to radiation.
Source: former Navy Nuclear Power Program Electronics Technician Instructor.
Good question
Be really interested to know what it's made out of. Had a coworker who used to work in forgings and did some stuff that got sent to nuclear plants, they said that they had really strict requirements on material compositions, specifically needed to ensure that the (think it was steel, may have been something else) material had basically no traces of cobalt in it because the cobalt would becomes radioactive over the service life.
Depends heavily on the kind (and intensity) of radiation. Beta (electron/positron) and gamma (photon) generally won't, but neutron and alpha can. Many of the atoms that become radioactive will rapidly decay, and that's one of the mechanisms behind the impact to structural integrity.
Shortly after I returned to the States from Fukushima (a little bit after the disaster), I was taking an emergency response course on radioactivity. Everybody there got to use a Geiger counter on themselves and their belongings and various things in the room. The only thing that set it off was the purse I had brought back with me.
Anecdotal, obviously, and it wasn't highly radioactive, but I did get rid of the purse.
More relevant is how much damage the radiation will do to the circuit boards. There's some really small circuitry in there and those energetic particles are going to do some damage every time they smack into stuff.
Itself, not very, but any dust or flakes that land on it definitely will be. It only takes very small particles.
Usually, equipment like that is abandoned in place. Radiation has weakened its parts, and decontamination is complex and time-consuming for something you can't just hose and scrub down.
We're just gonna set up a vat of molten metal and send it out Terminator 2 style. /s
Let's just say, you wouldn't want to stand near it.
A sincere question: why they don't place some relay/repeater for the robot's signal so they could control it from anywhere in the world through internet (or even some very private wireless communication network, outside internet due to security concerns)? The fact that they have to switch personnel every 15 minutes is a sign that they're doing this in situ, rather than remotely.
Drones with mobile network connectivity are already a thing, for example. If you consider that internet exposure is dangerous (connection could be hacked, etc), ham transceiver repeaters are also a thing, and you can even chain many of them across many kilometers. It's called mesh network.
Highly Radioactive situations and nuclear applications in general cause great trouble with any digital device, let alone complex Wireless communication, due to the fact that the particles being emmited can flip bits on your Microprocessors and make the whole thing break down. Fully analog devices are used for control applications in nuclear plants for that reason, there is likely something like that going on with this setup
Ah, got it. Thanks for the reply!
If I know my bad Japanese movies correctly, the radiation is going to mutate that robot until it is 80 feet tall and only Gamera will be able to stop it.
You know if they turn it into a video game with each copy sold on steam tied to a different robot, they could probably get this dinner 10x faster. I mean have you ever seen how much time people put into Minecraft? Satisfactory? Hydroner? Just a name a few. Speedrunner Fukushima any % lol
Have you seen the average griefer or troll in any multiplayer game?
See, totally harmless accident. Just give it another hundred years and the place will be good as new.
Nobody claims it was harmless, but it sure was very low on the harmless scale – especially if you compare it with every fear monger's favorite, Chernobyl.
In all the famous cases, Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, and Sellafield, it was close enough to a real disaster. Sure, only some people died, some more got radiation poisoning, cancer, even more lost their pets, their homes, their livelihoods, quite some animals died… thank god that’s “low on the harmless scale”.
Don't worry it probably won't be long before the houthi rebels or some other terrorist state backed crazies manage to successfully launch an attack on a nuclear power station somewhere then you won't have to keep hearing about three mile island, chernobyl, Fukushima, the windscale fire, sizewell leaks, or any of the other times nuclear power has gone dangerously wrong.
Thankfully Isreal doesn't have nuclear power plants because it's obviously too dangerous, let's hope Russia, Iran, China, or any other well funded powerbase don't get pushed into a corner and see funding an attack on a western nation as a viable response. Or some wacky religious group, race war proponents, attention seeking crazies or any of the usual suspects get as lucky as the 911 hijackers.
Lots of people claim it was harmless because relatively few people died. They have to focus on just one statistic (and a very unreliable at that) to prop up their delusions.
When reading about dungeness reactor i learned that even reactors that haven't melted down also take about a hundred years to decommission safely.
Another interesting stat I heard on a podcast is that the coal industry has proven much more deadly than the nuclear industry in terms of human lives lost.
More or less everyone is allowed to return to their homes as of this year. Even the radiation in the direct vicinity of the plant is nearly nearly down to pre-accident levels
It's much better than the alternative, yes cancer rates shot up and a huge area of once beautiful and productive land is contaminated but if we had rooftop solar then rich corporations wouldn't be able to manipulate us with price spikes and lock us into being helpless without them.
The rich need to have power over us and centralized power generation controlled by the ultra wealthy is the only option that let's them have that dominamce so every propaganda bot must ignore all the safety risks, spiraling economic costs, and political bullshit so they can push for it and divert money from.far more viable and effective alternatives.