Update on Diary

The diary of Fukushima’s Return – The Bamboo-Active

                  In 2011, the nuclear disaster that shocked the whole world after 1986 Chernobyl disaster was The Fukushima Daichii Nuclear disaster. On March 11, 2011, Tsunami caused by Tohoku earthquake hits the Fukushima Daichii nuclear power plant, resulting in the catastrophic failure of the nuclear operation system. On March 12, 2011, the nuclear radioactive substance began to leaks from the three out of six nuclear reactors. The amount of radioactive measured by INES was at Level 7, which is about 30% of Chernobyl disaster.

TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company)

                  The incident forced 300,000 people to leave their home immediately and 8 towns around the Fukushima power plant have become ghost towns.

Three years later, the power plant still facing the problem of the radioactive leaks, leaving the area unlivable for at least 50 years.

                  Bamboo is one of the fastest growing plants in the world and their benefit is versatile. It can satisfy 4 factors of living that are food, habitat, clothes and medicine. Bamboo is very strong yet have high elasticity property, it can be used for building structures and also can be used for textile and paper. As technology advance, the research and study shows that bamboo fiber can be used as a composite material that can be used for vehicle and even for building material.

The Bamboo-Active – Project Introduction

                  Therefore, the project aims to develop the Fukushima ghost town into the center of advance bamboo composite material factory and research center for radioactive substance and bamboo material. Consisting of 4 facilities; the research center, robots housing, bamboo factory and material-making factory, located at the entrance of the Fukushima power plant. The material will help recover the leaks of the nuclear power plant.

The bamboo fiber composite material will be the material used for construction of the nuclear power plant around the world, with its strength and ability to withstand the earthquake.

Since it cannot be live by human, the majority of the inhabitants are robots that dividing in to Industrial robots and Humanoid. Industrial robots will include the transport robots, forestation and harvesting robots, and factory robots. Humanoid will be the middle communicator between human and robots, they will also be the one who is controlling the robots in site and take care of the production.

Divided into 4 phases by starting at the outer area of restriction zone and will narrow down as the project keeps going. The first phase is about settling down, bamboo planting and decontaminating the area. The construction of 4 facilities will be done in this phase.

                 

                  People who enter the restricted zone will have to go through the Gateway to change into the radioactive protection suite. Surrounded by the bamboo grove, they will lead to the research center, robots housing and etc. People can visit the research center for educational trip or joining the research team. The robots housing connected to the research center will consist of preparation area, meeting room, press conference room and the tearoom. The tearoom is where people meet the humanoid with the view of the bamboo grove and the factories, they can see the robots working in far away.

The Diary of Fukushima’s Return – The beginning

June 15, 2014 - The Operation Starts in the middle of year 2014 because it was the rainy seasons, the best seasons to plant bamboo. We sent the Plantation robots in the 20 km. restriction area consisting of xx of Excavator robots, xx of Planting robots and xx of maintenance robots. The duty of these robots was to grow the Bamboos in the designated area. The excavator started to dig up the soil in grid-like pattern as it was programmed and left the soil next to the pits. Followed by the planting robot, its duty was too plant the baby bamboo and cover up the soil around the bamboo. After that the maintenance robots took care of the pruning, watering and fertilizing for about 5 years. The total of planting bamboo in first phase was xxx square meter.

June 30, 2014- the robots complete the first phase’s plantation. After this we will have to take care and maintenance the new bamboo groove.

June 28, 2015 – The Bamboo groove are doing great, perhaps because of the rainy season and we also fertilize the plant once a week. At this rate we will have the healthy bamboo groove in no time.

June 14, 2017 – The bamboo groove are growing as beautiful as ever, so the robots shifted the plantation process into the second phase (15 km. restriction area), same operation was done as the first phase (20 km. restriction area) plantation.

June 28, 2017 – The robots finished the second phase’s plantation. You can see that the bamboo groove starts to spread out through the exclusion zone.

July 30, 2019 – Start of The first phase harvest season, the end of rainy season and the start of dry season. This time we sent xx of cutting robots, xx of pick up robots and xx of transportation robots. The cutting robots scanned each bamboo in order to determined the proper size and the right property of contained fiber that needed for construction and bamboo fiber material. The pick up robots then collected the fresh cut bamboo stem and put all together in one big pile for the transportation robots to pick up all the bamboo stem and transport to the where the facilities located.

August 18, 2019 - The harvesting of first phase was done.

August 19, 2019 - we also sent the construction robots to the site, which located around the power plant entrance. They have started the construction of 4 facilities after they got the bamboo stems from the transportation robots.

September 1, 2019 - The decontamination process then took place after the completion of first phase harvesting. Consisting of xx of excavator robots, xx of – robots and xx of transportation robots.

September 8, 2019 – Completion of gateway construction.

September 12, 2019 – Every Gateways are now functioning.

September 13, 2019 – First day that the exclusion zone is open to the public visit. We are providing the radioactive protection suite.

October 29, 2019 - All of the facilities were completed

November 1, 2019 - the first date of facilities operation. The research center consisting of lobby, 2 laboratories, 1 library, 1 meeting room, 1 storage and toilets, involved 8 practitioners that are 6 researcher and 2 technicians. Other than that was operates by humanoids and robots. In the research center we have the total of 5 humanoid; 1 receptionist, 1 maid and 2 laboratory’s assistants. Next to the research center is teahouse, perhaps the most critical facility out of all. The corridor connected the research center to another meeting room, this meeting room were made especially for visitor. On the left side is Press conference room which was first used the same date as its opening. Next from meeting room is the teahouse room, it is the place where visitor communicates with the humanoids. After the tea ceremony was done, the room that was surrounded by close partition can be sliding open, and then you can see factory and the robots that were working……

December 20, 2019 - We started to complete the production of the first lot of bamboo fiber

January 15, 2019 – first lot of composite material ready to be used on site

April 15, 2020 – Cherry Blossom in full bloom event at Tomioka, Fukushima.

May 25, 2020 - we manage to successfully recover the leaks of 4 reactors in Fukushima daichii nuclear power plant.

June 24, 2020 – Start planting Third phase (5 km. exclusion zone). This phase will be the permanent bamboo groove which will be the natural resource for the production.

August 27, 2020 - The decontamination process then took place after the completion of first phase harvesting. Consisting of xx of excavator robots, xx of – robots and xx of transportation robots.

February 7, 2021 – Bamboo robots first launch

July 28, 2022 – Harvest Second phase bamboo  (plated on June 14, 2016)

May 9, 2024

As today that we have gone through a lot of hard work and tons of experimental, in hoping to make the best out of exclusion zone, we have completed steps by steps and hope to do better in the future.

                  In the next 10 years, the exclusion zone will finally becomes an official robots city for radiation research and advance bamboo technology. Perhaps we will be the most authentic sustainable material for radiation associates facilities and organization.

We will still remains in our concepts and spiritual of balancing nature and artificial. The future world will not contain only robots, highways, and buildings, but the co-existence of artificial technology and natural living.