Tuesday, July 3, 2012

#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: TEPCO Sending Quince No.2, Two Packbots to High-Radiation Reactor 1


In fact, they may be inside the reactor building as of now, on July 4, 2012.

TEPCO is sending all the survey robots it has in its possession - Quince No.2 and two Packbots from iRobot - probably to conduct the survey in the area of the Reactor 1 building 1st floor where the company is planning to drill holes to conduct an endoscope survey later to probe inside the Containment Vessel (like it has done in Reactor 2).

The robots will enter from the south-east corner entrance. The area has locations with radiation levels exceeding 1 sievert/hour, with the highest 4.7 sieverts/hour. That is where the steam was gushing from in between the floor and the pipe that goes through the floor to the basement. Packbot observed it in June last year. (At that time, TEPCO said it was 4 sieverts/hour, but the latest press release linked below says it was 4.7 sieverts/hour.)

In June, TEPCO's human workers entered the basement to measure the water levels and temperatures. Near the surface of the water, the radiation level was 10.3 sieverts/hour.

From TEPCO's handout for the press, July 3, 2012:

"Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Unit 1 Reactor Building First Floor TIP Room and South Area Inspection (July 4, 2012): Scheduled Access Route for the Robot"


Quince 2

-Visual inspection of TIP Room (Acquire images and videos)
-Measure the dose rate, temperature, humidity and dust
density in TIP Room
-Support opening the key to TIP Room (Provide images taken
from different angles)
-Support opening the door of TIP Room (Provide images
taken from different angles)


Packbot (1st)

-Open the key to TIP Room
-Open the door of TIP Room (and keep it open)
-Support the dose rate measurement in the South area
(Confirm the position of the 2nd Packbot)

Packbot (2nd)

-Visual inspection of the South area (Acquire images)
-Measure the dose rate in the South area (at 15cm and
150cm above the floor)



Beautiful collaboration, in the area where the highest radiation level measured was 4.7 SIEVERTS/hour. I wish them luck.

3 comments:

JAnonymous said...

This is great ! Really looking forward to know if they can do the job. It would be good news with respect to the way they can handle the century-long (or more) task of cleaning up this mess.

Instead of making one gundam, they should make a joint-venture and build hordes of those packbots/quinces/thawks/others, in just the same way they do with the fighter planes.

Then Fukushima workers could work from the safety of the Tepco HQ, considering the insane amount of optical fibers that wraps Japan from Kagoshima to Hokkaido.

Some robots will get stuck, fail, etc... But robots are cheap, and soon enough, all workers will have absorbed their allowed doses for 10 years already.

Anonymous said...

When all eggs are put into one basket, or one "gundam" --there is NO BACKUP for failure. Not, of course, that there has been any failures at all at Fukushima (sarcasm).

Anonymous said...

Plutonium and the End of Humanity
02 july 2012
http://blog.imva.info/world-affairs/plutonium-humanity

*****

Fear & Courage
18 May 2012
http://blog.imva.info/world-affairs/fear-courage

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