External article: Fukushima robot operator's diary recovered from caché after it was deleted

The diary from robot operator H.S. is again available online after being taken down. It has been recovered from cache by IEEE Spectrum.

The diary begins in April 26th and ends in July 4th, covering the bulk of the Fukushima catastrophe as seen by an insider. As such it is a valuable present history document. However the content is not too informative: it's mostly about training with robots...

Some particularly notable excerpts:

April 27th

One of my dosimeter’s alarms began to go off and would not stop... When I asked one of the radiation management personnel... he said, "There is nothing wrong with it, so please continue your work". So, I did!

May 11th

The No. 4 nuclear reactor building where I was during the earthquake is now a disaster because of the tsunami. When I imagine what would have happened if I had been just 5 minutes late, even now I feel so fearful thinking of it.

July 3rd

Today we went and used two PackBots to measure the radiation levels on the first floor portion of the No. 3 nuclear reactor building where the Warrior cleaned (decontaminated) yesterday.

As a result, the radiation levels dropped on average about 10%.


If you are just looking at the measurement results, they still look pretty high, but on the other hand, if you just look at the difference [in certain areas], you get the feel that it was quite effective.


There are places where the level dropped to a maximum of 80 Sv/h.

Thanks to Fukushima Diary for the heads up.

LINK.