Headline Dec. 02/ ''' JAPAN'S *ROBOTICS* JOURNAL '''

''' JAPAN'S *ROBOTICS* JOURNAL '''

IN 2010 ROSATOM, the Russian nuclear agency bought a controlling interest in Uranium One :   

A Canadian based company that owned- valuable extraction rights in Kazakhstan, Canada and Australia. These three countries are the world's largest uranium producers and-

Russia's acquisition of those rights served its ambitions to build and fuel Nuclear Power Plants around the world. 

In an ancillary part of the deal, Rosatom also bought mining rights in the United States, where Uranium production is sparse.....

All this one strand of history. all this one march and evolution. Fast forward present, and this is what unfolds as Robots locate Fukushima fuel...........

FOUR ENGINEERS HUNCHED before a bank of monitors, one holding what looked like a game controller.

They had spent a month training for what they were about to do : pilot a small robot into the  contaminated heart of the ruined Fakushima nuclear plant.

Earlier robots had failed, getting caught on a debris or suffering circuit malfunctions from excess radiation.

But the newer version, called the Mini-Manbo, or little sunfish, was made of radiation hardened materials with a sensor to help it avoid dangerous hot spots in the plant's flooded reactor buildings.

The size of shoe box, the Manbo used tiny propellers for hover and glide through water in a manner similar an aerial drone.

After three days of carefully navigating through a shattered reactor holding, the Manbo finally reached the heavily damaged Unit 3 reactor. 

There the robot beamed back video of gaping hole in the bottom of the reactor and, on the floor beneath it, clumps of what looked like solidified lava : the first images ever taken of the plant's melted uranium fuel.    

The discovery in July of Unit 3 and similar successes this year in locating the fuel of the plant's other  two ruined reactors are what Japanese officials hope will prove to be a turning point in the worst economic disaster since Chernobyl.

What happened to the fuel was one of the enduring mysteries of the catastrophe, which occurred on March 11, 2011, when an earthquake and 50 foot tsunami knocked out vital cooling systems of the plant.

*Left to overheat, three of the six reactors melted down*. 

These uranium fuel rods liquefied like candle wax, dripping to the bottom of the reactor vessels in a molten mass hot enough to burn through the steel wall and even penetrate the concrete floors below.

No one knew for sure exactly how those molten cores had traveled. Desperate plant workers  -later celebrated as the Fukushima Fifty'' were eventually able to cool them by pumping water into the reactor buildings.

But with radiation levels high, the final location of the fuel remained unknown.

As officials became more confident about managing the disaster, they began a search for the missing fuel.

Scientists and engineers built radiation resistant robots like the Manbo and a device like a huge X-ray that uses exotic space particles muons to see the reactors innards.

Now that engineers say they have found the fuel, officials of the government and the utility that runs the plant hope to sway public opinion.

Six and half years after the accident spewed radiation over northern Japan and at one point seemed to endanger Tokyo, the officials hope to persuade-

 A skeptical world that the plant has moved out of post-disaster crisis mode and into something much less threatening cleanup.

''Until now, we didn't exactly where the fuel was, or what it looked like,'' said Takahiro Kimoto, a general manager in the  nuclear power division of the plant's operator, like Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco. 

''Now that we have seen it, we can make plans to to retrieve it.''

Tepco is eager to portray the plant as one big industrial cleanup site. About 7,000 people work here, building new water storage  tanks, moving radioactive debris-

To a new disposal site and erecting enormous scaffolding over reactor buildings torn apart by the huge hydrogen explosions that occurred during the accident.     

Access to the plant is easier than it was just a year ago, when visitors still had to change into special protective clothing.

These days, workers and visitors can move about all but the most dangerous areas in street clothes.

The Honor and Serving of the latest Operational Research on Nuclear Technology, Power Plants, and Dangers continues.

With respectful dedication to the Leaders, Scientists, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society and Twitter-!E-WOW!  -the Ecosystem 2011:

''' Science & Scenes '''

Good Night and God Bless

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