At the bottom of each photo, you can see the radiation levels encountered by the robot at that location. (See my previous post for the video.)
From TEPCO's Photo and Video Library page:
Torus Room entrance (18 to 117 millisieverts/hour):
Manhole, southeast (177 to 234 millisieverts/hour):
Primary Containment Vessel side (234 to 254 millisieverts/hour):
Stairway, southwest (192 to 324 millisieverts/hour):
The tethered robot also carried a recording equipment to record any sound of water in the Reactor 3 Torus Room, but the equipment was stand-alone.
Since the cable was apparently damaged and the robot became inoperable, there is no way for now to retrieve any audio recording it did. The radiation levels inside the Torus Room is too high for human co-workers (100 to 360 millisieverts/hour), as you see below in TEPCO's handout for the press (7/12/2012):
According to the handout, the survey was about three-quarters done. The workers and the robot spent about 3 hours on the work, when the cable communication to the robot was interrupted. 6 TEPCO employees who had been scheduled for 8 millisieverts radiation exposure for their work of carrying the robot through the narrow passage in the basement and holding the Torus Room door open actually got 5.32 millisieverts.
The photographs and video released show no major damage inside the Torus Room. The stairway in the southwest corner shows damage. (The photographs and the video can be downloaded at TEPCO's site, here.)
(UPDATE 7/12/2012: TEPCO released the photographs and the video taken by Survey Runner. See my latest post.)
===========================================
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.
TEPCO is sending 11 TEPCO employees and one robot (Survey Runner, which looks like a smaller version of Quince and has already gone inside Reactor 2's Torus Room in April this year - photo, video) down to the basement of Reactor 3 to survey the inside of the Torus Room. Planned radiation exposure for the human workers is 8 millisieverts.
No information of how long each worker will have to stay there to assist their robot co-worker. They won't go inside the Torus Room, as the very high radiation levels are expected inside. Instead, Survey Runner will go. The human workers will carry the robot through the narrow passage in the basement to the Torus Room door, which they will open for the robot.
8 millisieverts of radiation exposure. Before the Fukushima accident, it was rare even for the nuclear plant workers to get 1 millisievert exposure in one year. Now, the workers may get 8 years' worth of radiation in a day's work at Fukushima I Nuke Plant.
When the workers tried to enter the Reactor 3 Torus Room in March this year, the access door was warped and didn't open. The workers didn't stick around to open the door, because the radiation levels were probably too high for the work (it was 75 millisieverts/hour in front of the door). TEPCO sent workers again in June to measure the water level in the basement.
From TEPCO's handout for the press, 7/10/2012:
Investigation Outline
Purpose: As water leak investigation and water stop measure implementation are planned for the area from PCV / Reactor Building to the Turbine Building, it is critical to understand the current condition of the Torus Room. A robot will investigate the inside of Torus Room with high radiation dose to obtain inputs to be leveraged for planning the water leak investigation and water stop measures.
Investigation Items
The following will be done in the Torus Room in Unit 3 Reactor Building basement.
-Visual confirmation (Acquire photos and moving images)
-Dose rate measurement
-Collect sound samples in the Torus Room
Equipments: Remote control robot (Survey runner)
Members involved: 11 TEPCO employees
Investigation date: Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Planned expose dose
8 millisievert: 6 Carrying the robot through the triangle corner, opening doors
2 millisievert: 5 Robot operation, preparation
*Robot operation control is done in Unit 3 S/B (0.1mSv/h)
Below is the first installment of the 6 videos, showing the contaminated water underneath the grating.
There is no discernible damage along the catwalk or the upper part of the Torus Room.
This is the third video that shows the manhole in the northeast side with some paint peeling and discoloration (the video will be live in about 30 minutes):
For the other 4 videos, go to TEPCO's Photo for Press page for the April 18, 2012 videos, here.
The robot "Survey Runner" went down to the Reactor 2 Torus Room on April 18, and TEPCO released two photos of two manholes.
From the TEPCO's survey plan, the robot was to cover slightly over 1/3 of the Torus Room, but in the press conference TEPCO's Matsumoto said about 90% of the Room was covered.
Things look almost clean after seeing the mess in other reactors' upper floors. The robot must have taken more photos and probably videos, but for now TEPCO is willing to release only these photos.
From TEPCO's Photos for Press, 4/18/2012:
North S/C [suppression chamber] manhole:
Southeast S/C manhole:
Note the air radiation levels display at the bottom of the photos. At the north manhole, it is 47.4 millisieverts/hour, and at the southeast manhole 61.4 millisieverts/hour. The numbers next to the per-hour radiation level may be the cumulative radiation level sustained by the robot.
In about 30 minutes between when the robot was at the southeast manhole and when it was at the north manhole, the cumulative radiation (if that's what it is) went up from 57 millisieverts to 82.2 millisieverts.
From TEPCO's press conference on April 18,
The robot was in the Torus Room for 3 hours, from 10:52AM to 1:51PM.
6 TEPCO workers accompanied the robot, receiving 0.28 millisievert radiation.
The robot got 186 millisieverts cumulative radiation in the 3-hour work.
120 millisieverts/hour in the northwest corner.
90% of the Torus Room covered.
No discernible leak, damage observed. Clean.
Video, audio recorded by the robot, will be released on April 19.
The robot, "Survey Runner", is made by Topy Industries Co. in Tokyo, and looks like a smaller version of Quince. The robot is going into the Torus Room of Reactor 2 on April 18.
From TEPCO's handout for the press, English, on April 17, 2012:
Topy Industries Co. is a company located in Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo. It has been developing the robots for disaster response in collaboration with Professor Shigeo Hirose of Tokyo Institute of Technology Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering since 2003. For more on the free loan of the robot to TEPCO, see their English press release.
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