Unlimited Nuclear Disaster Updates

[Woolly Bugger]

Images from deep inside Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant show daunting scale of clean-up job

Images taken by miniature drones from deep inside a badly damaged reactor at the Fukushima nuclear plant show displaced control equipment and misshapen materials but leave many questions unanswered, underscoring the daunting task of decommissioning the plant.

The 12 photos released by the plant's operator are the first from inside the main structural support called the pedestal in the hardest-hit No. 1 reactor's primary containment vessel, an area directly under the reactor's core. Officials had long hoped to reach the area to examine the core and melted nuclear fuel which dripped there when the plant's cooling systems were damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

Earlier attempts with robots were unable to reach the area. The two-day probe using tiny drones was completed last week by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, or TEPCO, which released the photos on Monday.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fukushima-nuclear-disaster-japan-drone-photos-deep-inside-reactor-1-meltdown/

[Woolly Bugger]

Current State of Post-Accident Operations at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station


...The removal of fuel debris has been delayed. Experimental removal using a removal device (a folding robot arm of 22m in length) originally scheduled in the Mid-term Roadmap to take place in Unit 2 in FY2021 has been delayed (for the third time) until October 2024. Having been delayed due to the COVID-19 infection and then malfunctioning of the removal device, trouble has also been experienced opening the reactor vessel penetration hatch (X-6 penetration) to be used to insert the device. The hatch having been opened, it was found that cables, etc. inside the penetration, which melted during the accident, have fused and are lying in a heap. TEPCO built a device to push away the accumulated material using machinery and water (scheduled to be completed at the end of FY2023). The plan now is to use an experimental telescopic-type removal device, differing from the robot arm removal device, that can be inserted into the hatch without removing the accumulated material. This device will be used to extract debris on an experimental basis by October, and then from the end of FY2024 through to FY2025 the robot arm removal device will also be used to extract debris. In addition, investigations are ongoing due to water level reductions occurring in the Unit 1 pressure containment vessel (PCV) and Unit 3 PCV and suppression chamber.


https://cnic.jp/english/?p=7057

This detailed report shows that they still don't know how they are going to clean up this nightmare!

[Woolly Bugger]

First Images Inside Fukushima's Nuclear Reactor Show "Icicle-Like" Structures
Many robots have ventured into the ruins of Fukushima, but few have returned.

A snake-like robot and mini drones have ventured deep inside the irradiated reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in Japan. As shown in their new images, the clean-up operations still have some way to go 13 years after the catastrophic nuclear meltdown.

The decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station has made progress. In 2023, they finally went ahead with their controversial plan to dump treated water from the Fukushima nuclear disaster into the Pacific Ocean, marking a significant milestone in its clean up.

However, there have been a considerable number of setbacks. In 2017, the ruins of Fukushima were dubbed a "robot graveyard" owing to the number of remote-controlled probes that had broken inside the irradiated facility.

TEPCO has said the full decommissioning of the plant will "require 30 to 40 years", but critics say this is naively optimistic.

https://www.iflscience.com/first-images-inside-fukushimas-nuclear-reactor-show-icicle-like-structures-73731

[Woolly Bugger]

Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War or: How American imperialism learned to stop worrying and love the bomb


Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War, the new series on Netflix by Brian Knappenberger, is a documentary about the Cold War and the current US conflict with Russia.

��"With firsthand accounts and access to prominent figures around the world, this comprehensive docuseries explores the Cold War and its aftermath," reads Netflix's breathless promotional blurb.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/04/29/rsmh-a29.html

https://www.netflix.com/us/title/81614129?s=i&trkid=0&vlang=en&clip=81763743

[Woolly Bugger]

Atomic vets are on the verge of losing federal benefits. Congress hasn't helped

In the spring of 1947, Navy sailor Lincoln Grahlfs went to an Oakland, Calif., hospital suffering from a 103-degree fever, a strange facial abscess and an abnormal white blood cell count.

A doctor there responded with an unorthodox treatment: X-rays to the sailor's face with only a shield to cover his eyes.

Soon after, the abscess and other symptoms cleared.

"He said, 'We call that the hair of the dog that bit ya,'" Grahlfs told NPR.

The dog that bit Grahlfs, in this case, was his exposure to the U.S. nuclear testing program.

In his 20s, the petty officer first class participated in Operation Crossroads in the Pacific Ocean, the first atomic bomb tests since the 1945 nuclear weapon attacks in Japan.

https://www.npr.org/2024/05/06/1248955334/nuclear-veterans-compensation-expiring

[Woolly Bugger]

First of Four Fukushima Reactors Cleared of Nuclear Fuel

One of four heavily damaged reactor buildings at Japan's tsunami-battered Fukushima nuclear power plant has been cleared of radioactive fuel rods, the operator said Saturday.

It was a significant step in the decommissioning efforts, but workers still have three heavily crippled reactors to clean up after they were sent into meltdown in the 2011 quake-tsunami disaster.

The overall cleanup work of the Fukushima plant is expected to take decades.

A total of 1,535 fuel rod assemblies have been now taken out of the building after Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s (TEPCO's) yearlong operation, a company spokesman said.

"Completion of the removal work is a milestone, but the decommission work will continue," plant chief Akira Ono told reporters.

The nuclear fuel was removed from a pool used to store the rods -- which were mostly spent -- in the reactor number 4 building, which was offline for regular checkups at the time of the March 2011 disaster.

The tsunami battered the plant's cooling system and sent reactors number 1 to 3 into meltdown, setting off the worst atomic accident in a generation.

TEPCO will remove fuel rod assemblies from the pools of other damaged buildings before extracting the melted fuel from the reactors.

https://m.naharnet.com/stories/en/159954-first-of-four-fukushima-reactors-cleared-of-nuclear-fuel

[Woolly Bugger]

Fukushima chief: No need to extend decommissioning target

Guests are not allowed to view images in posts, please Register or Login


The head of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant says there's no need to extend the current target to finish its decommissioning in 30-40 years despite uncertainties about melted fuel inside the plant's three reactors.

Ten years after meltdowns of three of its reactors following a massive March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan, the Fukushima Daiichi plant has stabilized but faces new challenges.

Nuclear regulators recently found fatal levels of contamination under the lids of two reactors, a test removal of melted fuel debris from one reactor has been delayed for a year, and a recent earthquake may have caused new damage to the reactors.

About 900 tons of melted fuel debris remain inside the plant's three damaged reactors, and its safe removal is a daunting task that its operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO, and the government say will take 30-40 years to finish. The removal of spent fuel units from cooling pools is already being delayed for up to five years.

https://ca.movies.yahoo.com/news/fukushima-chief-no-extend-decommissioning-080654429.html

[Woolly Bugger]

The U.S. bombings that
ended World War II didn't mark the
close of atomic warfare.
They were just the beginning.

ABOUT AN HOUR'S DRIVE from the Las Vegas Strip, deep craters pockmark the desert sand for miles in every direction. It's here, amid the sunbaked flats, that the United States conducted 928 nuclear tests during the Cold War above and below ground. The site is mostly quiet now, and has been since 1992, when Washington halted America's testing program.

There are growing fears this could soon change. As tensions deepen in America's relations with Russia and China, satellite images reveal all three nations are actively expanding their nuclear testing facilities, cutting roads and digging new tunnels at long-dormant proving grounds, including in Nevada.

None of these nations have conducted a full-scale nuclear test since the 1990s. Environmental and health concerns pushed them to move the practice underground in the middle of the last century, before abandoning testing altogether at the end of the Cold War.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/20/opinion/nuclear-weapons-testing.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2U0.7iXc.M6ybz0Of_j48&smid=url-share

[Woolly Bugger]

Simpler system eyed to recover melted fuel at Fukushima plant

A specialized device resembling a fishing rod will be used to "hook" tiny bits of melted nuclear fuel debris from one of three damaged reactors at the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the work is expected to begin no later than October and will be done on a trial basis.

The equipment was shown to reporters on May 28.

The removal of melted fuel is regarded as the trickiest phase of decommissioning work, because the wrecked facility is still plagued by extremely high levels of radiation

https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15288064


That's going to be a really slow process... if it works at all.

[Woolly Bugger]

French Polynesia's top leaders have voiced united angry protests against a New York Times story published this week headlined "Olympic Surfing Comes to a 'Poisoned' Paradise".

The story, published in Tuesday, was referring to the fallout in 1974 from one of the French nuclear tests — 193 were carried out between 1966 and 1996 on the atolls of Moruroa and Fangataufa — that would have contaminated the main island of Tahiti where the surfing events of the Olympics are currently being held in Teahupo'o.

https://asiapacificreport.nz/2024/08/04/tahitians-angry-over-new-york-times-olympic-poisoned-paradise-story/

Guests are not allowed to view images in posts, please Register or Login


Fifty years ago this July, as the waters of the South Pacific rushed toward the shores of Teahupo'o in a perfect, powerful curl, as they have always done, another wave visited the tiny hamlet. This time it was an invisible and airborne one: a surge of radiation escaping from a nuclear weapon test conducted by France in this far-flung reach of their republic.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/30/world/olympics/olympics-tahiti-nuclear-testing.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Ak4.VlvX.oNT60n3sAAf-&smid=url-share

[Woolly Bugger]

TEPCO to start grabbing debris from Fukushima reactor No. 2

Tokyo Electric Power Co. will soon begin using a 22-meter pole to remove melted fuel from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, after the device secured a green light from the Nuclear Regulation Authority.

The NRA approved the device on July 31 and will now issue a certificate for it.

The utility said it will maneuver the tool into the base of the No. 2 reactor from Aug. 21.

The device resembles a fishing rod with a clawed grab, which is designed to pick up pieces of highly radioactive fuel.

The tool was demonstrated in May at a facility in Kobe operated by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., where it was lowered into a model of the pedestal upon which the reactor sits.

A total of 880 tons of fuel debris is estimated to remain in the plant's No. 1 to No. 3 reactors.

The removal of melted fuel is regarded as the trickiest phase of decommissioning work, because the facility is still plagued by extremely high levels of radiation.

TEPCO plans to remove a few grams of melted nuclear fuel from the No. 2 reactor because radiation levels there are relatively low.


https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15371554

*my bold
Related News

[Woolly Bugger]

Thousands of tons of radioactive waste from atom bomb-making heading to Wayne County, Michigan


A hazardous waste landfill in Wayne County is preparing to take 6,000 cubic yards of soil and concrete and 4,000 gallons of groundwater contaminated with elevated radiation from a site in New York where the Manhattan Project developed the atomic bomb during and just after World War II.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, working on remediation of the Niagara Falls Storage Site in Lewiston, New York, estimates that 25 semitrucks per week, into January 2025, will transport the elevated radioactive wastes along public roads and highways to the Wayne Disposal facility just off Interstate 94 in Van Buren Township.

https://stocks.apple.com/A02kpWrcyS5yDO_0YLqN6JQ

[Woolly Bugger]

Which rural area will take the UK's nuclear waste?

A repeating tone - blip, blip, blip - is the audible reminder that we are in one of the most hazardous nuclear sites in the world:
Sellafield.
That sound - pulsing from speakers inside the cavernous fuel-handling plant - is a signal that everything is functioning as it should.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czx6e2x0kdyo

[Woolly Bugger]

A robot begins removal of melted fuel from the Fukushima nuclear plant. It could take a century

A long robot entered a damaged reactor at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant on Tuesday, beginning a two-week, high-stakes mission to retrieve for the first time a tiny amount of melted fuel debris from the bottom.

The robot's trip into the Unit 2 reactor is a crucial initial step for what comes next — a daunting, decades-long process to decommission the plant and deal with large amounts of highly radioactive melted fuel inside three reactors that were damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Specialists hope the robot will help them learn more about the status of the cores and the fuel debris.

Here is an explanation of how the robot works, its mission, significance and what lies ahead as the most challenging phase of the reactor cleanup begins...

https://apnews.com/article/japan-fukushima-reactor-melted-fuel-robot-9ffc309fb072580bee0161e8a24c8490#

[Woolly Bugger]

America Tried to Test a Massive New Weapon. It Turned Into a Nuclear Nightmare

New declassified documents reveal why the Castle Bravo test went horribly wrong.

6:45 A.M. ON MARCH 1, 1954, many residents of the Marshall Islands were at home when the Shrimp—the most powerful nuclear device the United States had ever tested—detonated in a blinding flash. In declassified footage, the nuclear explosion overwhelms the camera's view.
The Castle Bravo nuclear test was 1,000 times larger than the explosion generated by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It was the first live detonation of a thermonuclear weapon that could have been used in a war. The fallout came down on a massive swath of the Pacific, including several inhabited islands, creating the worst radiological disaster in American history. The day had just begun, but the impacts of the detonation would reverberate for decades.
As the glow faded, a stem of debris, smoke, and water vapor rose from Bikini Atoll, a ring-shaped reef in the Marshall Islands that had been designated by the United States as part of the Pacific Proving Grounds. The designation, made after the first nuclear tests happened in the area in 1946, ensured that the American government could test experimental nuclear devices with little concern for the Marshall Islands and their people, and without prying outside eyes. They'd been testing weapons there ever since.
Above the Shrimp's mushroom cloud, condensation rings bloomed and spread. The radioactive monster rose higher, the column below it pulling material from sea level like some kind of otherworldly tractor beam.
Footage from an observation plane showed the cloud bubbling and roiling until a cloudy veil smothered it, blurring the scene. In its wake were poisoned islands, people, and animals. Something disastrous had just happened, but the government downplayed the mistakes that led to this nuclear catastrophe and the full extent of the damage it caused.
It is only more recently, after the declassification of documents about the event, that we have a clear accounting of the disaster.

https://stocks.apple.com/AH5oXLYF5QJKz6v5R7JfMgQ