Fukushima: Robots in Hell a Missing Work

In an attempt to salvage the land compromised by the most serious nuclear accident of the century an inhuman force is called upon. Years after disaster struck Fukushima radiation levels still reach record highs, making it impossible for any life form to get close enough to investigate the power plant’s nuclear reactors. The film Fukushima: Robots in Hell displays hundreds of hours of footage filmed by robots, allowing humans to understand what went so horribly wrong without coming into contact with the deadly radiation levels that are able to kill an individual in as quickly as five minutes. Fukushima: Robots in Hell is representative of a missing work that contributes to the overarching themes of the ‘invisibility’ of radiation and how far it reaches, how cinematography is able to elicit an emotion or portray a perspective, and finally the acknowledgement of one’s vulnerability. This missing work connects greatly to the major concerns of Fukushima and helps us to further understand how this disaster turned Fukushima into a hauntingly abandoned place coated in radiation.

Because radiation is an invisible but highly toxic disaster an extremely advanced and creative plan had to be utilized in order to begin the deconstruction of the nuclear reactors and the cleanup within them. The film Fukushima: Robots in Hell portrays five main robots within the depths of Fukushima’s hell that have been used to handle such a feat. The first mission began a month after the disasters on April 5th, 2011 with a robot called Packbot, this robot was used to explore the reactor buildings and measure the different levels of radiation within different parts of the reactors in order to gauge where humans would be able to go in the buildings without jeopardizing their health. The Packbot robot was designed for military use and was able to identify such high levels of radiation that a human being would be killed in as little as forty minutes if they were to be exposed to it. Following Packbot another robot was constructed that was able to climb the stairs within the reactors, this robot was called Quince. This robot allowed us to see the fourth floor of the reactors for the first time in seven months following the disaster. In just one hour Quince received a dose of radiation ten times greater than that permitted for a human for one year. Shortly after it started its mission however, it got stuck within the reactor buildings and was unable to be salvaged. The last robot utilized in the exploration of the building was Sakura 1. This robot allowed the engineers to complete the mission of exploring the reactors and measuring the levels of radiation. These three robots showed us how far radiation can reach and allowed us to investigate the disaster in much more detail.

The next mission that had to be faced was the beginning of the decontamination inside of the reactors in order to try and lower the radiation so humans could begin to enter the buildings. To do this a new robot had to be constructed, this robot was called Raccoon and was able to spray high pressured water all along the floors of the building. This robot was able to decontaminate a total of seven hundred square meters of reactors two and three which is about seventy percent of the floors surface. In doing so beta rays had decreased by seventy to eighty percent however, the airborne activity did not significantly decrease. So, in order to try and achieve this a new robot had to be called upon, one that was able to clean the ceilings and walls of the reactors. This robot was called Mitsubushi, it is equipped to sand down surfaces and remove contaminated layers. Without these two robots the attempt to clean up and rebuild the reactors would not have been possible.

The biggest obstacle that engineers faced took place within the containment vessel where the fuel within the reactors melted into corium which is a highly radioactive material and can produce heat for years following. Corium is one of the most dangerous materials ever created by man and this feat will take decades to complete. Two final robots are called upon to handle this final mission, the Snake and the Scorpion. These robots were carefully constructed because they needed to be able to fit inside a 10cm wide pipe and locate the corium all while withstanding radiation at such a high level that it would be able to kill a human being within five minutes. Currently a robot, Maestro, is being designed by a group of determined engineers in France that will be able to access the corium and remove it, his mission will begin in 2020. If it weren’t for these robots Fukushima would continue to be a ‘no man’s land’ a place frozen in time by the deathly and invisible material that encompasses it.

It is fascinating how well cinematography is able to elicit an emotion in an individual, Fukushima: Robots in Hell is able to do so while still being extremely informative and educational. This film utilizes the disaster as an educational lesson of how dangerous nuclear energy truly is. It discusses how even after five years following the accident, levels were still at fifty MSV per year. Sievert units are used to measure radioactivity two MSV is naturally occurring radiation, one hundred MSV increases the risk of cancer, one thousand MSV causes nausea and vomiting, four thousand five hundred MSV is a fatal does in fifty percent of cases, and six thousand MSV is fatal in one hundred percent of cases. So those in contact with fifty MSV would experience an entire dose of MSV that a human can withstand for a whole year in a matter of hours. Regardless, the film informs us that the outer edges of the plant are still extremely active with workers attempting to begin the task of dismantling the reactors. This project is meant to take forty to fifty years and the workers are only allowed to work eight hours a month, each time they finish a day’s work their clothes are incinerated as a precaution. It took five years for the area surrounding the plant to be decontaminated and in this time reactors one and four have been entirely rebuilt with the help of protected control booths and cranes. Even after all of this however, radioactivity levels are rising quickly and are now reaching over two hundred MSV per hour. This movie is a cautionary tale that elicits a lot of emotions in the viewer. When one is watching, your heart goes out to not only those who were affected by this disaster but those that continue to work diligently in these harsh and extremely dangerous conditions in an attempt to fix the damage that has been done. Watching as these individuals put their lives at risk to try and salvage what is left of this forgotten town is extremely moving.

Vulnerability is a huge overarching theme within this film and surrounding Fukushima in general. Those working to help save Fukushima, knowing the dangerous position that they are putting them self in are extremely vulnerable. The acknowledgement of this precarity and vulnerability within this film helps contribute to its ability to provoke emotion in the audience. When one watches Nuclear Nation or Nuclear Cattle they are shown how those who lived in Fukushima were affected. Their vulnerabilities are addressed constantly, from moving to a new location with nothing and no one to trying to find their ‘sense of place’ from square one. Comparably in Fukushima: Robots in Hell these workers are facing extreme vulnerabilities, although much different, they are working in extremely dangerous conditions all for the sake of making people remember Fukushima and the people who lived there. While both vulnerabilities are very dissimilar they both shed light on the way that vulnerabilities affect an individual - or a place in this circumstance. The workers that are diligently fighting to save what’s left of Fukushima and the individuals who were displaced by this disaster share this vulnerability and help to show just how truly terrible and far reaching this disaster is and will continue to be for years to come.

Fukushima: Robots in Hell is a missing work that contributes to the overarching themes of the ‘invisibility’ of radiation, how cinematography is able to elicit an emotion or portray a perspective, and finally the acknowledgement of one’s vulnerability. This missing work connects greatly to the major concerns of Fukushima and helps us to further understand how this disaster turned Fukushima into a forgotten and abandoned place encumbered with radiation. It will take thirty to forty years to dismantle Fukushima and millions of euros will be used for research and development. With the help of Packbot, Quince, Sakura 1, Mitsubishi, Racoon, Snake, and Scorpion, among others, and the thousands of workers who have faced radiation and put their lives on the line, amazing progress has already been made in an attempt to save what is left of Fukushima. However the robot’s work has only just begun in Fukushima and this is just the tip of the iceberg for what they have left to do. I chose this film as a ‘missing work’ that I believe would’ve contributed a lot to this class because it is extremely educational and helps the viewer to better understand what actually happened in Fukushima. It shows us what has been done to help Fukushima since the accident occurred and what still needs to happen. Before watching this film I didn’t truly understand the depth of the incident and just how deadly the radiation in Fukushima still is to this day. I believe everyone should watch this film if they get the chance so that they can better understand what radiation is and just how far-reaching its effects are and moreover, to see these individuals work so hard and risk losing their lives to save a place that has been so greatly damaged and since forgotten.