#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: Robot "Quince" Video Inside Reactor 3

Diposkan oleh Pengetahuan dan Pengalaman on Wednesday, July 27, 2011

TEPCO released the video of the robot "Quince" going inside the Reactor 3's reactor building on July 26.

No information released yet on the effort by human workers on July 27.


According to tweets by a worker at Fukushima I Nuke Plant, TEPCO seems quickly running out of workers with low enough cumulative radiation, as the work these days has to be done inside the reactor buildings with very high radiation. He says TEPCO and the government are not involved in hiring of the workers at all, and it is left to the subcontractors to find workers. But they are having a hard time finding workers willing to work in an environment where they will reach the annual radiation limit in 2 weeks (I hope he's not talking about 250 millisieverts/year emergency limit) for an increasingly lower pay as the middlemen take cuts.

He seems to have been doing the indoor work himself, carrying equipment, pipes and lead shields up the stairs in the reactor building (Reactor 4, probably). He says:

"Robots may be able to go in and measure radiation, but the actual work has to be done by humans."

"Since all the elevators inside the reactor buildings have been destroyed, we have to carry everything up the stairs on foot. If I climb slow, I'll get more radiation. But if I climb fast, I'll be tired out quickly. It's difficult to pace myself..."