Huge 8.9 quake plus tsunami - Japan

99% of everything we've made that needs to be plugged into electricity to run does is really not needed for mankind to live comfortably and happy in life .....

Bluering

I already did and you missed the point.

99% of everything we've made that needs to be plugged into electricity to run does is really not needed for mankind to live comfortably and happy in life .....

The U.S. has just very publicly told the Japanese government to grow some balls and start facing the situation.

Given the violence of the explosion, could it smush together, (not likely, but possible) the used fuel and get it to go critical again?

The first, "Reconnaissance," completed within a year, was put into action in 1984, five years after the accident, creating "a major leap" in robotic technology, Dr. Whittaker said. It served cleanup duty for four years inside the containment building basement, then was succeeded by "Core Sampler." A third robot, "Work Horse" was built but never used.

The robots, which were submersible in water, were made of materials that wouldn't absorb radiation and lacked crevices where radioactive dust could accumulate.

Operated by humans at a distant control panel, the robots had to unroll enough electrical cord to provide power hundreds of feet down corridors deep inside the containment building. It was a major engineering feat that Dr. Whittaker initially designed on a napkin.

The robots carried cameras and equipment to measure radiation. They also bore high-pressure water sprayers, core drillers and scrapers.

Over the years, CMU's two robots cleaned up enough radiation in the basement to allow humans briefly to enter and evaluate conditions. A vacuum system was used to remove the damaged nuclear fuel from the reactor.

Still slightly contaminated, the containment building will remain sealed until TMI reactor No. 1, which is still operating, is decommissioned.

The $1 billion cleanup took 14 years to complete. Without the CMU robots, GPU would have been forced to recruit workers for short stints of cleanup duty at high cost and health risk.

"His team made the difference for us, when you look at the contribution it made in terms of human exposure and money to train people and bring people in," Mr. Pavelek said. "When you look at the money and expense [CMU saved], it was phenomenal.

"I have to tell you, I was amazed at the talent," he said. "[Dr. Whittaker] is an exceptionally intelligent man, but the team of students he put together astonished us."

Dr. Whittaker called it "a galvanizing experience that seeded the robotics movement."

"Before this, there was speculation on what robots might do and what the technology might become, but there were no robots at work in the world," he said. "It propelled new technology from ideas to implementation."

Since then, Dr. Whittaker has developed robots used inside mines and in exploration of seas and space. His team also developed the world champion robotic car. As part of Astrobotic Technology Inc., he hopes to win the $20 million Google Lunar X Prize by landing a robot on the moon in December 2010.

TMI occurred at a time when technology to clean up nuclear accidents didn't exist and few thought a cleanup would ever be necessary. Thirty years later, the experience still serves as the nuclear power industry's ultimate lesson in the importance of safety and the need to anticipate solutions to unforeseen problems.

"The perspective is, 'It will never happen again,' and it does," Dr. Whittaker said. "Then the perspective is, 'We'll be ready for it,' and we're not."

Scientists Project Path of Radiation Plume
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: March 16, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/science/17plume.html?_r=1

Source: NYTimes

A United Nations forecast of the possible movement of the radioactive plume coming from crippled Japanese reactors shows it churning across the Pacific, and touching the Aleutian Islands on Thursday before hitting Southern California late Friday.

Get Science News From The New York Times » Health and nuclear experts emphasize that radiation in the plume will be diluted as it travels and, at worst, would have extremely minor health consequences in the United States, even if hints of it are ultimately detectable. In a similar way, radiation from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 spread around the globe and reached the West Coast of the United States in ten days, its levels measurable but minuscule.

The projection, by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, an arm of the United Nations in Vienna, gives no information about actual radiation levels but only shows how a radioactive plume would probably move and disperse.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4774552

Would our government so blatantly tell OUR citizen nuke workers to "get back in there" knowing it was "recognized as a suicide mission?"

Chernobyl military graveyard. (Many of the workers who drove or piloted these died from radiation poisoning.)

Of the 72,000 Russian Emergency Workers being studied, 216 non-cancer deaths are attributed to the disaster, between 1991 and 1998. The latency period for solid cancers caused by excess radiation exposure is 10 or more years; thus at the time of the WHO report being undertaken, the rates of solid cancer deaths were no greater than the general population. Some 135,000 people were evacuated from the area, including 50,000 from Pripyat.