October 29, 2015

Robot for decontaminating high places to be deployed at Fukushima nuke plant

A new radioactive cleanup robot is seen. (Mainichi)

http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20151029p2a00m0na011000c.html

A new robot designed to help decontaminate high, hard-to-reach places at the disaster-stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant will go into service in mid-November, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has decided.

The tracked robot is a compact 2 meters high, but can extend cleaning equipment about 8 meters up. Decontaminating the upper reaches of the reactor buildings has hitherto been impossible, obstructing cleanup efforts, and TEPCO hopes the new robot will help solve the problem.

The utility plans to deploy the robot on the first floor of the No. 3 reactor building, home to one of three reactors that melted down in March 2011 and especially radioactive. Decontamination work on the building's floors and other easily reachable areas has been ongoing, but piping and other spots higher up are more complicated to get to and have not been cleaned yet. Some 70 percent of the radiation inside the No. 3 building is from contaminants in its higher reaches.

The remote-controlled robot sprays dry ice onto contaminated equipment such as piping, scrapes off the ice and sucks it up -- along with the radioactive materials.

The new cleanup robot is seen extended to its full 8-meter height. (Mainichi)

Maximum radiation levels now stand at 9 millisieverts per hour on the first floor of the No. 1 reactor building, 30 millisieverts in the No. 2 reactor building, and 125 millisieverts in the No. 3 building. TEPCO has stated that those radiation levels must be brought down to 3 millisieverts per hour or less before it will send human workers into the buildings.

October 29, 2015 (Mainichi Japan)