tepco

Workers struggling to contain the leaking Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan have only a few robots that are able to get deep inside the highly radioactive reactor buildings and piloting them has been very difficult, according to a blog written by one of the workers and republished by IEEE Spectrum.

The postings, written by an author who goes by the initials S.H., began appearing after the March 11 quake and tsunamis that knocked out the plant and ran through July. Many of them detail training sessions, as seen in the associated video compilation below. The blog was deleted last month when word of it spread in Japan, but it has also appeared on the site of AIST, a government-backed research center.

Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) hired contractors, including S.H.'s employer, to help bring the plant to a cold shutdown in January, but the postings paint a picture of an inadequately equipped robot response to the catastrophe. Observers, including your humble correspondent, have wondered why robot-mad Japan wasn't prepared for a major nuclear accident like Fukushima. … Read more

Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) has launched a large-scale solar power plant on Tokyo Bay with enough juice to power 2,100 homes.

The Ukishima power plant, situated on an 11-hectare site in Kawasaki City near Haneda airport, will generate electricity from approximately 38,000 solar panels made by Sharp.

It produces up to 7,000 kw, enough to power 2,100 households, and it's expected to reduce CO2 emissions by 3,100 tons per year. … Read more

Japan's struggle to contain a nuclear power plant crippled in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami has had another setback as record-high radiation levels at the site have been detected.

Radiation levels at least 5 sieverts per hour were detected on the second floor of the No. 1 reactor building at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, the highest detected indoors at the plant since the quake and tsunami, operator Tokyo Electric Power Company said this week.

The previous highest dose detected indoors there was 4 sieverts per hour in the No. 1 reactor building.

The beleaguered utility … Read more

Japan today marked four months since the March 11 earthquake and tsunamis that left more than 20,000 dead and missing, with nuclear officials predicting it will take decades to dismantle the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Removal of melted nuclear fuel at the plant won't begin until 2021; the fuel is apparently now in a solidified state and presents extremely difficult technical challenges. Full dismantling, including demolishing the reactors, will take decades more and will only happen after radiation levels fall, Japanese media reported, quoting a draft report on the cleanup.

Compiled by operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, and the Japan Atomic Energy Commission, the draft based the estimate on the aftermath of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania.

The Fukushima crisis is much more severe, and forced the evacuation of 80,000 people. In early June, Japanese nuclear officials doubled their estimate of the radiation released after March 11. The reevaluation followed the government's ranking of the event on par with the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe.

Workers at the plant are still trying to bring the critical situation under control by January 2012. Decontaminated water is being used to cool the reactors ahead of efforts to achieve a cold shutdown. … Read more

Fujitsu will cut its power usage by 15 percent this summer in parts of Japan suffering from power shortages caused by the massive March earthquake, the company said today.

Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) has been struggling to deal with nuclear power reactors severely damaged by the quake and resulting tsunami, leading to efforts in Japan to encourage lower electrical power use. Fujitsu said it will cut its own power usage in areas serviced by Tepco and Tohoku Electric Power through a variety of programs, and it's an interesting list for any company worried about power cost and supply … Read more

Struggling with a continuing nuclear crisis and strains on its power supplies, Japan is thinking of requiring that all new buildings, including homes, come equipped with rooftop solar panels by 2030, according to a recent Nikkei newspaper report.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan may announce the plan this week at a G8 summit in France, the business daily reported. Kan has pledged to review Japan's energy policy and increase renewable sources following the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which was hit by the March 11 earthquake and tsunamis.

Kan hopes a solar-energy requirement for new buildings, along with technological innovation, would help reduce the cost of solar-power generation.

The government's current energy policy includes plans to increase nuclear energy to more than half of the total supply by 2030 as a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Japan now gets about 30 percent of its electricity from nuclear sources. … Read more

TOKYO--iRobot PackBots are being used to explore the interior of reactor buildings at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which was severely damaged in last month's massive tsunami and subsequent hydrogen blasts.

The battle-hardened PackBots, sent to Japan along with iRobot Warriors, have been recording high levels of radiation at the plant, where operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) struggles to restore key cooling functions. It's expected to take months to shut down the facility.

The video below shows a remote-controlled PackBot moving through the shadowy first floor of Unit 1. Its caterpillar treads move slowly over debris strewn around the floor. Another video shows the machine carefully opening a door.

Tepco says that robots have been used to measure radiation and do surveys of Units 1, 2, and 3. They apparently measured radiation of up to 57 millisieverts per hour.

In other video related to the plant, a Honeywell T-Hawk micro air vehicle sent to Japan to help with the nuclear crisis has recorded footage of the damaged exterior of the Fukushima plant. … Read more

TOKYO--If there's one sound you don't want to hear in Tokyo these days, it's the earthquake alarm. The two jarring chords came crashing through the cherry blossoms from a public-address speaker the other morning and sent me bounding into the street in my pajamas. The room started wobbling seconds later.

The 6.3-magnitude aftershock followed a 7.0 quake the evening before that made the skyscraper I was in feel like a ship at sea. On the 20th floor, I could sense the building sway for several minutes as it absorbed the shock waves.

I lived in Tokyo for a long time and I'm used to quakes rattling the capital. But returning after the 9.0 temblor and tsunamis that smashed northern Japan on March 11, Tokyo feels more dangerous than ever.

There have been nearly a thousand quakes in the past month, including one as I write this. Not to mention the threat from the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, where radiation leaks have led Japan to rank it on par with Chernobyl on the International Nuclear Events Scale.

Some people have left Tokyo, or even Japan altogether. Fukushima differs vastly from Chernobyl, but for every scientist who downplays the radiation danger, there seems to be another who will emphasize the unknowns in the equation and play it up. It's hard to know whom to believe.

People are coping in different ways. The famous Japanese stoicism, born out of centuries of earthquakes, fires, and war, is evident everywhere as Tokyoites quietly go about their business, making sushi, holding elections, and playing baseball. But there's a pronounced sobriety in the air. … Read more

Six workers were exposed to excessive radiation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Saturday as a mile-long power line was connected to Reactor No. 2 in an effort to restore power to its cooling system. Crews hope to restart the system Sunday, The New York Times reported, but meanwhile observers have been speculating how many robots authorities have deployed to keep people out of harm's way.

The answer, apparently, is zero.

"I don't know that we have any such devices," said Hiro Hasegawa, a spokesman for plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), when asked whether robots were being used at Daiichi, which was struck by a tsunami following the 9.0-magnitude earthquake March 11.

It's surprising that Japan, long considered a technological powerhouse, has had to resort to such rudimentary methods of cooling the plant's reactors as water-bombing them with lead-lined helicopters.

Tepco apparently never imagined a situation in which the main and backup power to the coastal plant would be knocked out, despite the fact that Japan is one of the most quake-prone countries in the world, sitting atop a number of shifting tectonic plates. … Read more