This article was written by Tyler Durden and originally published
at Zero Hedge.
Editor’s Comment: Perhaps mankind was genius enough to unlock the
secrets of nuclear physics and atomic energy, but not wise enough to know how
to manage the lasting consequences of its awesome power. While TEPCO and
relevant authorities continue a laughable and dangerous “sweeping under the
carpet” routine to hide the effects from the public, it becomes increasingly
clear that there is likely no way to stop what is happening. There may be no
“cleaning up” the mess there in any span of time, and the contamination
continues to pour into the Pacific Ocean at a devastating rate.
The robots that have been sent in cannot function, despite being
designed with reinforcements that were supposed to allow it to endure the
extremely hostile conditions inside the heart of the nuclear reactor. God
help us all – this disaster cannot be underestimated. This is a disaster that
no man can undo.
Fukushima Aborts Latest Robot Mission Inside Reactor; Radiation At
“Unimaginable” Levels
by Tyler Durden
Two
years after sacrificing one robot, TEPCO officials have aborted
their latest robot mission inside the Fukushima reactor after the ‘scorpion’
became unresponsive as it investigated the previously
discovered hole where the core is believed to have melted.
A “scorpion” robot sent into a Japanese nuclear reactor to learn
about the damage suffered in a tsunami-induced meltdown had its mission
aborted after the probe ran into trouble, Tokyo Electric Power
company said Thursday. As
Phys.org reports, TEPCO, the operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant,
sent the remote-controlled device into the No. 2 reactor where radiation
levels have recently hit record highs.
The “scorpion” robot, so-called because it can lift up its camera-mounted
tail to achieve better viewing angles, is also designed to crawl over rubble
inside the damaged facility.
But it could not reach its target destination beneath a pressure vessel
through which nuclear fuel is believed to have melted because the robot had
difficulty moving, a company spokeswoman said.
“It’s not immediately clear if that’s because of radiation or
obstacles,” she said, adding that TEPCO is checking what data the
robot was able to obtain, including images.
…
The robot, 60 centimetres (24 inches) long, is made by Toshiba and
equipped with two cameras and sensors to gauge radiation levels and
temperatures.
“Scorpion’s mission is to take images of the situation and collect
data inside the containment vessel,” TEPCO spokesman Shinichi
Nakakuki said earlier.
“Challenges include enduring high levels of radiation and moving on the
rough surface,” he said.
Radiation levels inside the reactor were estimated last week at
650 sieverts per hour at one spot, which can effectively shut down robots in
hours.
This
is not the first robot to become disoriented under the extreme stress of
the Fukushima environment…
The robot sent to inspect a reactor’ containment vessel at the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant stopped responding three hours into the
operation.
TEPCO hoped to take a look inside the vessel containing one of the three
reactors, which underwent a meltdown in the 2011 nuclear disaster.
A group of approximately 40 workers sent the remotely-controlled device, allegedly
capable of withstanding high levels of radiation, into the vessel at
11:20 a.m. The robot stopped functioning after covering two thirds of the
route at approximately 2:10 p.m., according to the Tokyo Electric Power Co.
But
as Michael Snyder recently noted, radiation inside one of
the damaged reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power facility has reached an “unimaginable” level according to
experts. Because so much nuclear material from Fukushima escaped
into the Pacific Ocean, there are many scientists that believe that it was
the worst environmental disaster in human history, but most people in the
general population seem to think that since the mainstream media really
doesn’t talk about it anymore that everything must be under control.
Unfortunately, that is not true at all. In fact, PBS reported just last year
that “it
is incorrect to say that Fukushima is under control when levels of
radioactivity in the ocean indicate ongoing leaks“. And now we have just
learned that the radiation level inside reactor 2 is so high that no human
could possibly survive being exposed to it.
According to the Japan Times, the level of
radiation inside the containment vessel of reactor 2 is now estimated to be
“530 sieverts per hour”…
The radiation level in the containment vessel of reactor 2 at the crippled
Fukushima No. 1 power plant has reached a maximum of 530 sieverts per
hour, the highest since the triple core meltdown in March 2011,
Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc. said.
Tepco said on Thursday that the blazing radiation reading was taken near
the entrance to the space just below the pressure vessel, which contains the
reactor core.
The high figure indicates that some of the melted fuel that escaped the
pressure vessel is nearby.
It is hard to find the words to convey how serious this is.
If you were exposed to a radiation level of just 10 sieverts per hour,
that would mean almost certain death. So 530 sieverts per hour is simply off
the charts. According to the Guardian, this recent
measurement is being described by scientists as “unimaginable”…
The recent reading, described by some experts as “unimaginable”, is far
higher than the previous record of 73 sieverts an hour in that part of the
reactor.
A single dose of one sievert is enough to cause radiation sickness and
nausea; 5 sieverts would kill half those exposed to it within a
month, and a single dose of 10 sieverts would prove fatal within weeks.
And the really bad news is that there appears to be a 2 meter hole that
was created by melted nuclear fuel “in
the metal grating under the pressure vessel in the reactor’s primary
containment vessel”.
The following comes from Bloomberg…
New photographs show what may be melted nuclear fuel sitting under one of
Japan’s wrecked Fukushima reactors, a potential milestone in the search and
retrieval of the fuel almost six years after it was lost in one of the worst
atomic disasters in history.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc., Japan’s biggest utility, released images on Monday
showing a grate under the Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 2 reactor covered in black
residue. The company, better known as Tepco, may send in a scorpion-like robot as soon as February to determine the temperature and
radioactivity of the residue.
If that isn’t frightening enough, one Japanese news source is reporting that this melted
nuclear fuel “has since come in contact with underground water flowing from
the mountain side”…
The melted fuel has since come in contact with underground water
flowing from the mountain side, generating radioactively contaminated water
every day. In order to dismantle the reactor, it is necessary to
take out the melted fuel, but high radiation levels inside the reactor had
hampered work to locate the melted debris.
If this disaster was just limited to Japan, the entire northern hemisphere
would not be at risk.
But that is not the case.
Most of the nuclear contamination from Fukushima ended up in the Pacific
Ocean, and from there it was literally taken around the rest of the planet.
The following was reported by PBS…
More than 80 percent of the radioactivity from the damaged
reactors ended up in the Pacific — far more than reached the ocean
from Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. Of this, a small fraction is currently
on the seafloor — the rest was swept up by the Kuroshio current, a western
Pacific version of the Gulf Stream, and carried out to sea where it mixed
with (and was diluted by) the vast volume of the North Pacific.
We don’t know if there is a connection, but it is extremely interesting to
note that fisheries up and down the west coast of the United States are
failing because of a dramatic decrease in fish populations. Just check out
the following excerpt from a story that was posted on
January 18th…
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker today determined there are
commercial fishery failures for nine salmon and crab fisheries in Alaska,
California and Washington.
In recent years, each of these fisheries experienced sudden and unexpected
large decreases in fish stock biomass or loss of access due to unusual ocean
and climate conditions. This decision enables fishing communities to
seek disaster relief assistance from Congress.
Things are particularly bad up in Alaska, and biologists are
“stumped” as to why this could be happening…
In 2016, the pink salmon harvests in Kodiak, Prince William Sounds,
Chignik and lower Cook Inlet came in woefully under forecast
and stumped biologists as to why.
The estimated value of Kodiak’s 2016 haul was $2.21 million,
compared to a five-year average of $14.64 million, and in Prince William
Sound the ex-vessel value was $6.6 million, far less that the $44 million
five-year average. The total state harvest was the smallest since
the late 1970s.
Although state biologists weren’t ready to declare a cause for the poor
pink salmon performance, the Commerce Department press release attributed the
disasters to “unusual ocean and climate conditions.”
Further south, it was being reported last month that millions of dead sardines
are washing up on the shores of Chile.
I could go on and on with a lot more examples like this, but hopefully you
get the point.
Something really strange is happening in the Pacific, and a lot of people
believe that there is a link to Fukushima.
Not too long ago, I wrote about how the elite of Silicon Valley are “feverishly prepping“, but the
truth is that all of us should be. If you need some tips on how to get
started, you can find my prepping book right here. Our planet is becoming increasingly
unstable, and the Fukushima nuclear disaster is just one piece of the puzzle.
But it is definitely a very important piece. The nuclear material from
Fukushima is continuously entering the food chain, and once that nuclear
material gets into our bodies it will slowly irradiate our organs for years
to come. The following is an excerpt from an absolutely outstanding opinion
piece by Helen Caldicott that was published in the Guardian…
Internal radiation, on the other hand, emanates from radioactive elements
which enter the body by inhalation, ingestion, or skin absorption. Hazardous
radionuclides such as iodine-131, caesium 137, and other isotopes currently
being released in the sea and air around Fukushima bio-concentrate at each
step of various food chains (for example into algae, crustaceans, small fish,
bigger fish, then humans; or soil, grass, cow’s meat and milk, then humans). After
they enter the body, these elements – called internal emitters – migrate to
specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, where they
continuously irradiate small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta
and/or gamma radiation, and over many years, can induce uncontrolled cell
replication – that is, cancer. Further, many of the nuclides remain
radioactive in the environment for generations, and ultimately will cause
increased incidences of cancer and genetic diseases over time.
Are you starting to understand the gravity of the situation?
Sadly, this crisis is going to be with us for a very, very long time.
According to Bloomberg, they are not even going to
start removing melted nuclear fuel from these reactors until 2021, and it is
being projected that the overall cleanup “may take as long as 40 years”…
Decommissioning the reactors will cost 8 trillion yen ($70.4 billion),
according to an estimate in December from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and
Industry. Removing the fuel is one of the most important steps in a cleanup
that may take as long as 40 years.
The unprecedented nature of the Fukushima disaster means that Tepco is
pinning its efforts on technology not yet invented to get the melted fuel out
of the reactors.
The company aims to decide on a fuel removal procedure for the first
reactor during the fiscal year ending March 2019, and to begin removing fuel
in 2021.
A lot of people that end up dying as a result of this crisis may never
even know that it was Fukushima that caused their deaths.
Personally, I am convinced that this is the greatest environmental
crisis that humanity has ever experienced, and if the latest reading from
reactor 2 is any indication, things just took a very serious turn for the
worse.
This article was written by Tyler Durden and originally published
at Zero Hedge.
