The "Warrior" robot did measure some air radiation levels at 2.5 meters off the floor, but it couldn't get to the place where TEPCO wants to connect the pipe for nitrogen injection because some work benches and other equipment were in its way.
TEPCO released the diagram showing the radiation level on July 6 when the bots went inside the Reactor 3 building, and the measurements are lower than July 2 data. However, July 6 measurements were taken at 2.5 meters off the floor whereas July 2 measurements were done at 1 meter off the floor. On June 9 it was humans who measured the radiation, without the benefit of the double steel sheets. (I wonder what kind of boots they were wearing. I sure hope their boots had lead or tungsten soles.)
According to Asahi Shinbun, the Warrior robot tried to measure the radiation at the candidate location for the nitrogen injection pipe installation, but it couldn't get there. It took the measurement at 5 meters above the floor near the location, and the radiation there was 50 millisieverts/hour, almost double the radiation at 2.5 meters.
The radiation level at 5 meters is not noted in the TEPCO's diagram below.
TEPCO is considering sending the humans again on July 8. All this in order to comply with the government-mandated July 17 deadline for "stable cooling of the reactors" so that the Kan Administration can proudly announce "Now it's safe for the residents in the planned evacuation zone to come home!"
TEPCO that cannot say "No" to the government; instead, it will send the anonymous human workers in the high-radiation zone.
30-Day free trial by following the link.
Tokyo Time
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4 comments:
Hors sujet:
american readers of this blog, did you know the 1959 nuclear disaster ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jAHmaEs5cYU#at=78
Robbie001 sez:
Unfortunately as far as 99.9% of Americans are concerned Three Mile Island and Chernobyl are the only nuclear accidents that have ever happened and everything came out "OK". This is why it is so easy for the evil to mislead the ignorant, most people don't care. The favorite refrain of the nuclear industry after Chernobyl was no commercial western reactors were as poorly designed. Of course this wasn't true the Hanford N reactor was a nuclear reactor that produced nuclear weapons material and commercial public electricity. It was very similar to the failed RMBK-1000 in it was graphite moderated and water cooled without containment. This information wasn't made overtly public and the plant was quietly closed shortly after Chernobyl blew. The information can be found in Physics Today Nov. 1988 "Perils of aging US weapons plants Stir Outrage and Fear of a Time Bomb" but how many people read Physics Today with a critical eye?
I knew about the SRE accident before it was presented on the History channel but I used to get paid to read about stuff like that. Wikipedia has a brief overview of some of the accidents that happened at SSFL
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory#Accidents_and_site_contamination
Here's a DOE cleanup map for SSFL
http://etec.energy.gov/Cleanup/RadiologicalMap.html
They also made SNAP units at SSFL most were RTG's but some were actually reactors (SNAP-10A).
"On April 24, 1964, a satellite energized by an on-board plutonium system, a General Electric-built SNAP-9A (SNAP for Systems Nuclear Auxiliary Power), failed to achieve orbit and fell from the sky, disintegrating as it dropped.
The 2.1 pounds of Plutonium-238 in the SNAP-9A dispersed widely over the Earth. A study titled Emergency Preparedness for Nuclear-Powered Satellites done by a grouping of European health and radiation protection agencies reported that “a worldwide soil sampling program carried out in 1970 showed SNAP-9A debris present at all continents and at all latitudes.”
http://www.21stcenturyradio.com/articles/03/0224176.html
An "anomalous event" popped SNAP-10A's balloon into 50 easy pieces back in 1979. It had already been prematurely shut down by a related system in 1965 and parked in a 700 mile orbit for 4000 years but 14 years later it managed to crack up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNAP-10A
http://etec.energy.gov/History/Major-Operations/SNAP.html#4059
The former USSR littered the sky with reactors and some of them have come home to roost with others awaiting a future collision to release their deadly cargo in a rapidly decaying orbit. The plan back in the old days was to park the reactors in safe "orbits" for as many centuries as necessary unfortunately space is getting crowded fast and collisions are going to become more common. The Russians have already reported a few of their orbiting reactor hulks have lost containment along with the ability to retard orbital decay. They expect some (more) uncontrolled reentry events over the next few centuries if not sooner.
Robbie001 sez:
@ Areva
Please check the spam filter for a comment on this article.
"double steel sheets."
areva,
do they say what the thickness of the steel is?
Robbie,
on Hanford,
"It is now clear that the tanks began leaking as early as 1956, only a few years after the Atomic Energy Commission began pumping the poisonous sludge into the giant subterranean containers. It is also clear that the federal government covered up evidence of those leaks since the moment it learned of them. "
http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/2008/10/24_stclair_inside_hanford.php
John Gofman PhD,
"Plutonium is so hazardous that if you had a fully developed nuclear economy with breeder reactors fueled with plutonium, and you managed to contain the plutonium 99.99 percent perfectly, it would still cause somewhere between 140,000 and 500,000 extra lung-cancer fatalities each year."
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/inetSeries/nwJWG.html
"The Russians have already reported a few of their orbiting reactor hulks have lost containment along with the ability to retard orbital decay. They expect some (more) uncontrolled reentry events .."
Now THERE's a job for VASIMIR,
http://www.adastrarocket.com/aarc/AboutUs
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