A small drone flies into a damaged Fukushima reactor for the first time to study its melted fuel

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: AP

Updated 12:10 AM EST, February 28, 2024


TOKYO (AP) — A drone small enough to fit in one’s hand flew inside one of the damaged reactors at the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant Wednesday in hopes it can examine some of the molten fuel debris in areas where earlier robots failed to reach.

Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings also began releasing the fourth batch of the plant’s treated and diluted radioactive wastewater into the sea Wednesday. The government and TEPCO, the plant’s operator, say the water is safe and the process is being monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, but the discharges have faced strong opposition by fishing groups, as well as a Chinese ban on Japanese seafood.

A magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami in March 2011 destroyed the plant’s power supply and cooling systems, causing three reactors to melt down. The government and TEPCO plan to remove the massive amount of fatally radioactive melted nuclear fuel that remains inside each reactor — a daunting decommissioning process that’s already been delayed for years and mired by technical hurdles and a lack of data.

To help fill in that data, a fleet of four drones were set to fly one at a time into the hardest-hit No. 1 reactor’s primary containment vessel.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/japan-fukushima-nuclear-reactor-drone-radiation-water-af1640b8ae800066d5bfc728a211d34b

[betsuni]

1. Old stupid conservative men in charge. Nothing changes.

[NNadir]

2. This is pretty typical of jounalistic ignorance and...

...selective attention.

I note the use of the word "fatally" melted fuel, as if someone has actually died as a result of radiation releases at Fukushima.

It would be interesting to see how many ignorant reporters are writing about the 800 people world wide who will die from air pollution in the next hour from the indiscriminate release of dangerous fossil fuel waste, aka air pollution, or give an estimate of the cost of cleaning up the planetary atmosphere.

Which would save more lives, spending billions upon billions of dollars to "clean up" Fukushima to a standard that will never satisfy the badly educated radiation paranoids on this planet or shake them out of their ignorance, or spending the same amount of money to provide sanitary services to the 2 billion people who lack them?

Then there's the nonsense put forth about the tritiated water release. More people have surely died from the fossil fuels burned to carry on about this topic on line than the tritium will ever kill.

I invite anyone carrying on about Fukushima to provide a reputable scientic paper reporting the death toll from radiation exposure in the event.

[Blues Heron]

3. Would you walk into that reactor? All they are saying is you would die if you did. Thats what fatally radioactive means.

That zone is so radioactive that even their special robots get fried.

[NNadir]

4. I am forced by antinukes to breathe carcinogens.

Let me know how many members of the antinuke ignorance squad plan to live in the smokestacks about which they couldn't care less.

As for whether I would go into the reactor work zones, of course I would. I have worked with radioactivity in my career in the biologic space, understand it, and don't embrace ignorance or paranoia.

Obviously people do work in the area of the reactors, and they're not dying in mass despite the stupidity of people who kill by ignoring the very real death toll of fossil fuels.

[Blues Heron]

5. if you walked into that reactor you would die within hours or minutes. It would literally kill you with radiation.

Its silly to pretend otherwise.

[NNadir]

7. How many people on this planet have died from walking...

...into reactor cores?

As many as have died from coal mining?

One of the things about antinukes is they elevate stupid scenarios to divert attention from the stuff they don't care about.

My opinion is that the reactor core is not killing anywhere near as many people as antinuke ignorance is killing, about 7 million people per year. It probably could be ignored for centuries without causing a loss life.

Antinukes want to represent that the core is going to jump into their living room and disrupt them from watching Godzilla cartoons.

There has been a case of a person who went into a melted reactor core in 1954 by the way. He's still alive and is currently 99 years old. He served as President of the United States.

I have some nice text here on the case, but as I'm on a phone, I don't have time to link it now.

Antnukes, like antivaxxers don't seem to care how many people are killed by the spread of their ignorance.

[DiceK]

6. Either or?

Why is this an either or discussion? Pollution kinds of sucks, regardless of the cause.

[Woodwizard]

8. Instead of your typical knee jerk defence on nuke power.

What is your solution for the issues like this disaster from happening again?

It was a major disaster regardless if people died or not. And still is a major problem for many years to come.

[NNadir]

9. Instead of knee jerk attacks on nuclear energy what's the...

...plan for putting out the fires all over the planet from climate change?

One of the things about antinuke rhetoric is that it wishes to elevate nuclear accidents above climate change and the vast death toll from air pollution. Then these same people want me address their absurd criteria.

Fukushima took place 13 years ago. Twenty thousand people died from seawater and, as best we can tell, zero from radiation exposure. I never get asked to defend the safety of coastal cities. In those 13 years, about 90 million people died from air pollution. I never get asked how to prevent those deaths.

Why? Because antinukes engage in ethically appalling selective attention.

One of the morally vacuous positions I am routinely asked to take is to show that nuclear energy and only nuclear energy be risk free, and to ignore the fact that all other forms of energy have vastly greater risks.

Nuclear energy need not be risk free either in the minds of poorly educated radiation paranoid rubes or in the minds of highly educated nuclear engineers to be better than everything else. It only needs to be vastly better than everything else, which it is.

[DiceK]

10. Huh?

"I never get asked to defend the safety of coastal cities"

Why would anyone ask you to defend the safety of coastal cities?

[NNadir]

14. Because all of the deaths at the Fukushima event were from SEAWATER, not radiation.

[Woodwizard]

12. I asked a simple question.

What can be done to prevent the issues of another meltdown.

I did not mean yours.

Sorry for the misunderstanding I will talk slower next time. Thanks

[NNadir]

15. I'm not going to apologize for reacting strongly to rhetoric that kills people.

If one is defending the indefensible, one should probably not speak at any rate at all.

By the way, if one is really interested in nuclear engineering one can do what I do, open a book. In fact, I've opened thousands over the years. Alternatively, one can do what my son is doing, becoming a high level nuclear engineer.

[Woodwizard]

17. Dodged the question again.......

[NNadir]

18. I'm not the education department. There are people...

...who seem to believe that I'm responsible for providing soundbites to address what they are too lazy to find out for themselves. A great deal has been written and is publicly available with respect to the placement of the back up diesels in the Fukushima reactors. Anyone with a real interest can look it up.

Most of the "solutions" to engineering that risk away are to my mind workable but hardly ideal. To me the best answer involves fission products, especially elements like tellurium.

Any money spent to make nuclear energy "safer" however, is likely wasted, since nuclear energy is already the safest form of energy known.

One can learn this, although it takes both interest and work.

[electric_blue68]

11. Just... Wow, NNadir...

"I am forced by antinukes to breathe carcinogens.
10:06 AM
Let me know how many members of the antinuke ignorance squad plan to live in the smokestacks about which they couldn't care less."

Has it ever occurred to you that those of us in the "anti-nuke ignorance squad" also wanted to seriously reduce, perhaps even eventually elimate fossil fuels?
You paint with such a Broad Brush! 🙄

I marched in DC through the late 70's into the '80s for renewable energies... for which while that President who walked into that nuclear reactor (I read the story at some point) and was for it: still - he put up Solar Panels on the WH as well. Which Ray-gun took down.

If we'd seriously ramped up the various forms of Renewables by the mid-late 80's we might have seriously slowed climate change over the subsequent 33+ years. Plus seriously reduced fossil fuels. 😑

[Woodwizard]

16. Dont bother.

For the last 10 years I have solar on my shop it produces all the power we need I installed heat pumps to heat and cool getting rid of our propane.

And NNadir just called them childs toys there is only one solution according to him we should just pop up nuke plants all over the world.

I am not even anti nuke but with the fact that humans are unstable and tend to have wars and government instabilities that is not the solution. The level of stability and maintenance is completely overlooked in his nuclear fantasy world.

A mix of alternative energy sources and efficiency can be done now with the political will, so that wont happen either.

[NNadir]

19. I also marched for the reactionary fantasy of so called...

..."renewable energy" only to recognize that this scheme was abandoned in the 19th century for a reason, i.e. that it's reactionary.

Since the year 2000, trillions of dollars have uselessly squandered on solar and wind, destroying vast stretches of pristine wilderness for junk that will be landfill in less than 20 years.

As I've been noting in the Science Forum, we are now seeing concentrations of CO2 that are over 50 ppm higher than was the case when I joined DU. The rate of accumulation of the dangerous fossil fuel waste is accelerating, not decelerating. In short, the improperly named "renewable energy" hasn't worked, isn't working and won't work. It's not sustainable, not clean and has done nothing to address climate change. Combined, after trillions of dollars, vast wasted resources, solar and wind was, as of 2022, 15 Exajoules out of 624 Exajoules. They're growing slower than fossil fuels, in units of energy. This is in an atmosphere of mindless cheering. Combined they don't produce half of the energy that nuclear produces, this in an atmosphere of mindless vituperation.

The original idea behind the so called "renewable energy" was never about fossil fuels. It was always about attacking nuclear energy. The antinuke assholes in Germany after funding Putin are burning coal.

One can chant and one can march but one should be aware of what one is pushing.

I am. I used to buy the reactionary dogma that we should depend on the weather for energy. However, we have destabilized the weather precisely because we didn't have either the courage or decency to question ourselves.

If one needs to choose between being popular or right, it is an element of decency in my less than humble opinion to choose to be right.

We have failed to address climate change because of reactionary dogma. History will not forgive us nor should it.

[electric_blue68]

13. And by the way, NNadir... Can you spell C-h-e-r-n-o-b-y-l....

Encyclopedia Britanica

As many as 49 people may have died in the initial explosions. Beyond these immediate deaths, several thousand radiation-induced illnesses and cancer deaths were expected in the long term. The incident set off an international outcry over the dangers posed by radioactive emissions.

And it seems we're still waiting on the Yucca Mountain permanent Nuclrar Waste storage as some nuke plants are nearing capacity of their on-site storage facilities.

From ABC News Dec 7, 2023

"More than 500 mines across the Navajo Nation once supplied uranium that helped power the U.S. Department of Defense's nuclear arms development, including the Manhattan Project during World War II, but not a single one has been completely cleaned up in the decades since, according to the Environmental Protection Agency."

Then there is he Church Rock Mill Spill dumping 94 million gallons of nuclear waste going into the Puerto River

ABC News

"The effects of the 1979 toxic spill into the Puerco River were detected as recently as 2015, nearly 50 miles downstream, when residents in a town called Sanders, Ariz., learned about the contamination that persisted more than three decades later.

Tommy Rock was a doctoral student when he discovered records going back 10 years that showed levels of uranium almost double the amount deemed safe by the EPA.

Still, residents say they were not notified before Rock shared his research, even though the Safe Drinking Water Act requires states to notify its citizens within 30 days of contamination being discovered."

[NNadir]

20. Sure, but I wonder if mindless antinukes can add and subtract.

There's a report, whenever I hear of dummies carrying on about Chernobyl, of the death toll associated with antinukism that I generally reproduce. It's from a prominent medical journal, one of the most respected in the world, Lancet.

It is here: Global burden of 87 risk factors in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 (Lancet Volume 396, Issue 10258, 17–23 October 2020, Pages 1223-1249). This study is a huge undertaking and the list of authors from around the world is rather long. These studies are always open sourced; and I invite people who want to carry on about Fukushima to open it and search the word "radiation." It appears once. Radon, a side product brought to the surface by fracking while we all wait for the grand so called "renewable energy" nirvana that did not come, is not here and won't come, appears however: Household radon, from the decay of natural uranium, which has been cycling through the environment ever since oxygen appeared in the Earth's atmosphere.

Here is what it says about air pollution deaths in the 2019 Global Burden of Disease Survey, if one is too busy to open it oneself because one is too busy carrying on about Fukushima:

The top five risks for attributable deaths for females were high SBP (5·25 million [95% UI 4·49–6·00] deaths, or 20·3% [17·5–22·9] of all female deaths in 2019), dietary risks (3·48 million [2·78–4·37] deaths, or 13·5% [10·8–16·7] of all female deaths in 2019), high FPG (3·09 million [2·40–3·98] deaths, or 11·9% [9·4–15·3] of all female deaths in 2019), air pollution (2·92 million [2·53–3·33] deaths or 11·3% [10·0–12·6] of all female deaths in 2019), and high BMI (2·54 million [1·68–3·56] deaths or 9·8% [6·5–13·7] of all female deaths in 2019). For males, the top five risks differed slightly. In 2019, the leading Level 2 risk factor for attributable deaths globally in males was tobacco (smoked, second-hand, and chewing), which accounted for 6·56 million (95% UI 6·02–7·10) deaths (21·4% [20·5–22·3] of all male deaths in 2019), followed by high SBP, which accounted for 5·60 million (4·90–6·29) deaths (18·2% [16·2–20·1] of all male deaths in 2019). The third largest Level 2 risk factor for attributable deaths among males in 2019 was dietary risks (4·47 million [3·65–5·45] deaths, or 14·6% [12·0–17·6] of all male deaths in 2019) followed by air pollution (ambient particulate matter and ambient ozone pollution, accounting for 3·75 million [3·31–4·24] deaths (12·2% [11·0–13·4] of all male deaths in 2019), and then high FPG (3·14 million [2·70–4·34] deaths, or 11·1% [8·9–14·1] of all male deaths in 2019).

It works out to around 7 million people per year, roughly 19,000 people per day, about 800 every hour, all killed, in my mind, by antinuke selective attention.

Now Chernobyl, about which I have oodles of information, from something called the primary scientific literature took place in 1986.

Most antinukes, in my experience can't do simple math, never mind high level math, but it's now 2024, about 38 years ago. At a death toll of 7 million per year out of even a whiff of concern from people who whine about Fukushima and Chernobyl, mindlessly, I might add, this works out to around somewhere between 250 and 270 million deaths, all attributed to antinukism to my mind.

By what moral calculus does the death toll from Chernobyl measure compared to these numbers?

The commercial nuclear industry is now nearly 70 years old. I have routinely requested dumb shits who think they can say "Chernobyl" or "Fukushima" or even dumber "Three Mile Island" to show using the primary scientific literature that all of the nuclear meltdowns, so called "nuclear waste" storage or any of the other very stupid "concerns" of the nuclear concern trolls has killed as many people as will die from the consequences of antinukism - aka air pollution, never mind climate change about which antinukes couldn't care less - in the next ten hours. Let me help the mathematically challenged, at roughly 800 deaths per hour from air pollution - that works out to 8000 people.

I never get an answer to this question, no matter how many freaking out antinukes I ask. They either decline to produce a legitimate high quality paper from the primary scientific literature showing this (because one doesn't exist) or they change the subject or they make stuff up.

If it helps, here is a paper from the famous climate scientist Jim Hansen and a colleague, reporting (in 2013) the number of lives that nuclear energy saved from antinuke moral vapidity, selective attention and indecency:

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

I invite antinukes to contest his numbers, not that antinukes know anything at all about numbers.

Which has killed more people in Ukraine, Chernobyl or the dangerous fossil fuel weapons of mass destruction that Putin is unleashing? Those weapons were funded by the money that German antinukes have been sending him in the 21st century for the Russian fossil fuels they burned because antinuke stupidity now rules their country. So out with it, out with a number for Chernobyl deaths from radiation as compared to the death toll from Putin's German funded weapons!

Numbers don't lie, after all. People lie, to themselves and to each other, but numbers don't lie.

Got a number? Kiev is just shy of 100 km from Chernobyl. Before Russians funded by German antinukes started bombing the city, the population of Kiev was about 2.9 million. Isn't it surprising that less 100 km of Chernobyl - the big, big, big, big boogeyman of intellectually and morally challenged antinukes - that all 2.9 million people lived there for 38 years without dying off?

One of the striking things about antinukes is that they have no sense of decency. None. They're a lot like antivaxxers, except antivax ignorance never, on Covid's worst day, killed 19,000 people per day.

Oh, and if we're having a spelling bee, can you spell "C-L-I-M-A-T-E C-H-A-N-G-E?"

Again, no sense of decency, none, zero.

[electric_blue68]

21. When discussing your points, research; calling people mindless, dummies,without morals is not "good people skills". I...

was tested off and on as a kid for my IQ* bc as a preemie undergoing reccently accepted (back then) new oxygen level therapy in the incubator and later by a pysch student as a teen.

My dad was in the top 5% (electrical engineer)
I am in the top 2%.
Hardly a dummy, dude.

*IQ tests can be limited, and of different types so it's not a totally governing principle so to speak.
But it does partially measure something.

And yeah, I know about radon in houses, too.
I may relatives that live in a more affected area.

[NNadir]

22. Really? Do tell...

Last edited Fri Mar 1, 2024, 10:43 PM - Edit history (1)

I assume therefore of anyone reporting their level of genius that they can explain how Chernobyl and, in fact, all nuclear power events since 1954, killed, since 1986, as many people as died from air pollution in the reported reference from the prominent medical journal Lancet reference.

I would also assume that a person at a genius level can compare two numbers.. I asked for a reference, not a statement that one is a genius, one's dad is a genius, or any such thing.

As I indicated in my post, whenever I ask an antinuke to show that in the nearly 70 year history of commercial nuclear power, the associated death toll is greater than the death toll of about 10 hours of air pollution, about 8000 people, the subject gets changed, in this case IQ tests.

Donald Trump also states that he's a genius, a "very stable genius."

I don't base my opinion of his "genius" on his reports about himself, but on what he says.

By the way, I estimated my own IQ at 29 some years ago, on a website where I was ultimately banned for telling the truth about Jim Hansen's paper cited in my previous post which I will again cite below.

First my comment on my low "IQ."

A Note on This Race and IQ Business.

Even with my low "IQ" I can tell the difference between hundreds of millions of people who died from air pollution since 1986 and the death toll from Chernobyl, which I was asked to spell, even though I have been studying the issue pretty much since it happened, in the primary scientific literature.

In fact, Chernobyl caused me to change my views about nuclear energy from rote unexamined antinuke stupidity of the type one still sees around here, to a proponent of nuclear energy, given that it established, definitively the worst case, a reactor at the end of its fuel cycle that released a large fraction of its radionuclides in a fire that burned for weeks, which can easily be compared to the death tolls from air pollution and climate change.

I regard Chernobyl as a relatively minor event blown up by people with poor educations who are unable to make simple comparisons, provide references to support those comparisons, etc.

My conclusion is based on data.

Chernobyl is in Ukraine. Surely a highly intelligent super duper intelligent, IQ smashing, genius who is the direct descendent of another genius can provide numbers to show that the deaths from radiation at Chernobyl is comparable to the war conducted by Vladimir Putin using funds provided from fossil fuel sales to the antinukes in Germany, could he/she/they not?

The death toll from the Ukraine war is now estimated to be 500,000 according to an article in the New York Times.

Troop Deaths and Injuries in Ukraine War Near 500,000, U.S. Officials Say

I gave a reference to a paper in the scientific journal I read regularly, scanning every issue, Environmental Science and Technology reporting a death toll for radiation deaths from Chernobyl, this to address someone who asked if I could spell "Chernobyl." I not only can spell it, but have a vast library of scientific papers on the subject.

To repeat that reference:

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

Several UNSCEAR reports are readily available on line, and I've downloaded and reviewed many of them, along with a wide variety of papers from the primary scientific literature on the health and environmental consequences of the Chernobyl accident.

By the way, Ukrainians, even as they are under attack because German antinukes funded Putin by buying fossil fuels from him, plan to expand their nuclear power infrastructure after the war. They know far more about Chernobyl than geniuses picking lint out their navels to represent Chernobyl as worse than climate change, the death toll from air pollution, and thousands of other serious environmental issues about which antinuke "geniuses" couldn't care less:

Ukraine brings in new pre-licensing assessment for nuclear projects

Have a wonderful weekend of high intellectual achievement.

[electric_blue68]

23. I give you a certain real life test proof of a type of intellectual ability, and you dare to mention drumphf's....

name, and self declared "stable genius" comments in the same post? Really?!
Are you calling me a liar?

And I was -only commenting- on some part of my intellectual ability bc you broad brushed antinukes as dummies, and mindless.

Oh, and I didn't represent Chernobyl as worse than Climate Change. I mentioned it bc it was a terrible nuclear power accident.

Nor did you even acknowledge the suffering of the Navajo Nation due to uranium mining.