On August 3, 2016, seven kilometers above Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, a research plane captured something mysterious: an atmospheric aerosol particle enriched with the kind of uranium used in nuclear fuel and bombs.
A new probe designed specifically to take a deep view of a damaged nuclear reactor at the Fukushima plant was unveiled by Toshiba earlier today. Regrettably, it looks too cute to die.
Earlier this year, remotely piloted robots transmitted what officials believe was a direct view of melted radioactive fuel inside Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant’s destroyed reactors—a major discovery, but one that took a long and painful six years to achieve. In the meantime, the program to clean up the…
A new and unexpected source of radioactive material left over from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster has been found up to 60 miles away along coastlines near the beleaguered plant. The discovery shows that damaged nuclear reactors are capable of spreading radiation far from the meltdown site, and in some surprising…
In a classic case of adding insult to injury, workers at the beleaguered Fukushima nuclear power plant have uncovered what appears to be an undetonated bomb dating back to the Second World War.
One of the several brave robots to make one-way trips into Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant’s severely damaged reactors has accomplished what its less fortunate compatriots did not, sending back photos of what appears to be melted nuclear fuel from the interior of the ruined facility.
In just a few weeks, the residents of a Fukushima city will finally be allowed to return to their homes. Trouble is, the place has been overrun by hundreds of belligerent and potentially radioactive wild boars, prompting public safety concerns.
A remotely-controlled robot sent to inspect and clean a damaged reactor at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant had to be pulled early when its onboard camera went dark, the result of excess radiation. The abbreviated mission suggests that radiation levels inside the reactor are even higher than was reported last week—and…
Hundreds of millions of gallons of radioactive water remain sitting around the site of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan. But scientists can’t simply dump the liquid into the ocean, and if it continues sitting around, it could seep into the soil.
When a magnitude 6.9 earthquake rocked the Fukushima prefecture of Japan on Tuesday, fear swept the island nation that it could herald a repeat of the tsunami and nuclear disaster at Fukushima five years ago, both of which were caused by an enormous, magnitude 9.1 earthquake.
Pokémon Go is everywhere, and for some, that’s a problem.
Since March 2011, a 30-mile radius around the ruined Fukushima Daiichi reactor has been a designated exclusion zone, unsafe to travel. Over 100,000 evacuees left in a hurry and left behind a snapshot of what life looked like in the moments just before they fled. A brave soul recently snuck in to photograph the…
After a nuclear disaster, wildlife tends to flourish in contaminated areas, unchecked by humans that might otherwise hunt them. In the forests around Fukushima, the population of radioactive wild boars is exploding.
It’s been five years since Japan’s Tohoku earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown in Fukushima—and some consumers are still wary of produce grown in the region. That’s why some farmers aren’t growing plants in soil that might be contaminated—they’re growing plants in polyester instead.
Japan has closed one of its two remaining operational nuclear plants. The shutdown comes just days before the fifth anniversary of a catastrophic earthquake that triggered a tsunami and the biggest nuclear meltdown since Chernobyl.
Five years ago, a 9.0 undersea earthquake shook Japan. It was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in the country, and it was followed by devastating tsunami waves, killing 15,894 people. The tsunami caused level 7 meltdowns at three reactors in the Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power…
It’s already been almost five years since the nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, and the inspection and clean-up is going to last decades. Our best weapon? Amazing robots, like this one Toshiba announced on Monday.
In August, Japan reopened its first nuclear reactors after an almost two-year hiatus that followed the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Now, months later, Kyushu Electric Power Co. is preparing to guard the controversial energy source against terrorist attacks, too.
When Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant suffered its meltdown in 2011, over 44,0000 workers helped safely take it offline. Now, more than four years later, comes the first diagnosis of cancer in a recovery worker to be linked to radiation exposure during the work.
When the 2011 earthquake in Japan damaged the Fukushima nuclear power plant, teams scrambled to find a robot that could go where humans couldn’t. In many ways those robots failed, and ever since, there has been a focus on creating robots that can get the job done. Enter Toshiba’s “Scorpion” robot, which will make its…
