Robot "Survey Runner" Lost in High-Radiation Reactor 3 Torus Room at #Fukushima I Nuke Plant

(UPDATE 7/12/2012: TEPCO released the photographs and the video taken by Survey Runner. See my latest post.)

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On the second job since its debut in June surveying the Reactor 2 Torus Room, the robot Survey Runner became inoperable inside the Reactor 3 Torus Room. TEPCO says the radiation levels inside the Torus Room are just too high to retrieve the robot. The maximum radiation recorded by the robot before it became inoperable was 360 millisieverts/hour.

The robot was tethered. TEPCO does not have the footage of the mission available.

(For the details of what the robot and its human co-workers had hoped to achieve, see my previous post.)

From Jiji Tsushin (7/11/2012):

東京電力は１１日、放射線量の測定や映像撮影のため、福島第１原発３号機原子炉建屋地下に無人走行ロボットを投入したところ、操作不能になったと発表した。同社は「放射線量が高く、当面ロボットの回収は難しい」としている。

TEPCO announced on July 11 that the robot became inoperable after it was sent to the Reactor 3 building basement at FUkushima I Nuclear Power Plant to measure radiation levels and take the video. The company said it would be difficult to retrieve the robot for the moment because of the high radiation levels.

東電によると、ロボットを使った作業は１１日午前１１時から午後３時まで行われた。格納容器の一部で、水をためる圧力抑制室を収納する「トーラス室」でロボットを走行させ、調査を実施。線量は最大で１時間当たり３６０ミリシーベルトを記録した。

According to TEPCO, the work using the robot was done from 11AM to 3PM on July 11. The workers operated the robot that went inside the Torus Room that houses the Suppression Chamber (which is part of the Containment Vessel) to survey. The highest radiation level recorded [inside the Torus Room] was 360 millisieverts/hour.

ロボットは有線で操作していたが、途中で動かすことができなくなった。東電は「原因はまだ分からないが、有線のケーブルが損傷したことなどが考えられる」としている。ロボットには水の流れる音などを把握するため、録音機器も取り付けており、その回収も当面できなくなった。

The robot was tethered, but it became inoperable in the middle of the work. TEPCO said, "We don't know the cause yet, but it is possible that the cable got damaged." The robot was fitted with the recording equipment to record the sound of running water, but the equipment cannot be retrieved for the moment, either.

Quince 1 is still stranded in the Reactor 2 building, "for the moment", in much lower radiation, relatively speaking (10 millisieverts/hour where it sits).

I do hope TEPCO will release whatever footage they have, as well as the detailed information of what they did find. If anything, the new TEPCO under the control of the national government is releasing less information, not more. When they do release, they do so without detailed enough explanation on what they were doing.

Case in point is the set of photos of the upper floors (operational floors) of Reactor 3 that the company released also on July 11. It is just photographs of the mangled upper floors, with no explanation when it was taken and how it was taken. I suppose everyone is expected to tune in to their press conference to find more (if there's more). From the looks of the photos, they seem to have been taken from the boom of the crane they use to take air samples above the reactors at Fukushima. The air sampling at Reactor 3 was done on July 5, 2012, and the result of the nuclide analysis was released on July 10.

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