The Group Prepared for Intense Radiation In Reactor 4
The team worked largely in what’s known as the New Safe Confinement (NSC), a structure that was placed over the remains of Reactor 4 in late 2016. The location is as good a place as any to train robots to map and measure radiation; some estimates place radiation levels as high as 40,000 times above normal in the Reactor 4 control room.
The visit is actually the second time the team from Bristol had visited Chernobyl—and they learned their lesson about the intensity of the radiation last year. “Some of the equipment that we brought with us the first time, for example, some of the radiation detectors, in the NSC, they would saturate and couldn’t record meaningful data,” lead researcher Tom Scott said in a video on the project. “This time, a year later, we’ve been able to refine the technology, refine the equipment.”
Part of that refinement, Scott said, was not just measuring radiation, but training the robots to create a 3D map of the area. These maps, overlaid with radiation data, can help more accurately pinpoint the spread and location of radiation.
