JAPAN: A robot begins removal of melted fuel from the Fukushima nuclear plant. It could take a century.

A long robot entered a damaged reactor at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant on Tuesday, beginning a two-week, high-stakes mission to retrieve for the first time a tiny amount of melted fuel debris from the bottom.

The robot’s trip into the Unit 2 reactor is a crucial initial step for what comes next — a daunting, decades-long process to decommission the plant and deal with large amounts of highly radioactive melted fuel inside three reactors that were damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Specialists hope the robot will help them learn more about the status of the cores and the fuel debris.

Here is an explanation of how the robot works, its mission, significance and what lies ahead as the most challenging phase of the reactor cleanup begins.

Nuclear fuel in the reactor cores melted after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant’s cooling systems to fail. The melted fuel dripped down from the cores and mixed with internal reactor materials such as zirconium, stainless steel, electrical cables, broken grates and concrete around the supporting structure and at the bottom of the primary containment vessels.

The reactor meltdowns caused the highly radioactive, lava-like material to spatter in all directions, greatly complicating the cleanup.

Well, that’s exactly what robots are for. On the other hand, this being Japan, you have to wonder about the chances of a giant mutated robot flattening Tokyo.

THEY LEFT OUT “CALLOUSNESS”: House Report on Afghanistan Withdrawal Indicts Biden for Stupidity and Poor Planning.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Audio reveals moment two Delta planes collided on Atlanta runway: ‘We just hit something… could you tell us what that was?’

The shocking incident took place at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Georgia just after 10 am on Tuesday, when a Tokyo-bound flight clipped the back of a jet headed to Louisiana as it was taxiing for takeoff.

‘We just hit something on the taxiway, could you tell us what it was?’ one of the pilots asked in the audio.

Air traffic control responded: ‘The whole tail of that CRJ is off.’

No word yet how that happened but there is this: Diversity in the Skies: FAA’s Controversial Shift in Air Traffic Controller Hiring.

THEY’RE IN A GENERAL PANIC OVER HARRIS: Seriously? Democrats Are Flipping Out Over Cat Memes.

IS THIS MORE OF THAT SMART DIPLOMACY?

Ukrainians will now endure Iranian, North Korean and Russian missiles that are all protected by Biden Administration policy that forbids Ukraine from destroying launchers. https://t.co/9ebgfBlkgn

— Jay in Kyiv (@JayinKyiv) September 10, 2024

AND NOW YOU KNOW… THE REST OF THE STORY:

Even soft leftism ends with hard consequences.

UPDATE (From Ed): Stacy McCain: Springfield Gets What It Deserves.

LIVE BLOG: The Trump/Harris Debate We’ve All Been Waiting For.

Cocktails optional but recommended.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: China plans to build moon base at the lunar south pole by 2035. “The first phase will be completed around 2035 near the lunar south pole, and an extended model will be built by about 2050, according to Wu Yanhua, chief designer of the Chinese deep space exploration project, speaking to media at the event.”

REMINDER: Join Us Tonight for the Presidential Debate.

CHANGE: Germany tightens border controls in immigration clampdown. “We want to further reduce irregular migration… To this end, we are now taking further steps that go beyond the comprehensive, ongoing measures.”

THE REAL STORY HERE IS THE VITAL LESSON LEARNED BY TRUMP:

RFK Jr. says Trump admitted to him he didn’t drain the swamp his first term and has asked him to help him drain the swamp moving forward:

“He said, I didn't know anything about governing and he said, we won this election, and then all of a sudden, you got to fill 60,000 jobs.”… pic.twitter.com/GH19wOsYvX

— End Tribalism in Politics (@EndTribalism) September 9, 2024

Maybe Milei can lend him a chainsaw.

“THE SANDLOT” IS AN UNDERRATED GEM: James Earl Jones: 10 Iconic Performances.

THE FIX IS IN: ABC Debate Moderator David Muir Hosts Most Pro-Harris, Left-Wing Newscast. “MRC analysts reviewed all 100 campaign stories that aired on ABC’s World News Tonight from the day Harris entered the race (July 21) through September 6, including weekends. Our analysts found 25 clearly positive statements about Harris from reporters, anchors, voters or other non-partisan sources, with zero negative statements — none. That computes to a gravity-defying 100% positive spin score for the Vice President.”

DON’T WORRY, CNN WILL COME BACK AROUND IN TIME FOR TONIGHT’S DEBATE: Even CNN Thinks Kamala Harris’s Record Is Extreme.

PROBABLY: Kamala has more to lose in the debate than Trump.

The Kamala Harris campaign team apparently based their debate strategy assuming that ABC News would prove as pliable and willing as the rest of the media toward their efforts, expecting that the rules requiring muted mics between answers would be thrown out. They assumed wrong, and now they are reportedly “scrambling” for a new plan, describing Kamala’s position as “handcuffed” by the rules agreed to when Joe Biden was the Democratic candidate:

Trump’s worst moments in the debates are when he gets upset and snaps,” said an aide to Harris in her 2020 presidential campaign, granted anonymity to speak freely. “And they have neutered that.

That the vice president was counting on a rule change as essential for her debate strategy is like expecting a professor to cancel the final exam — which is never a good approach. What we’ve learned about Kamala Harris to this point on the debate stage is that she is easily knocked off her game, even with basic frontal lines of attack. She lost her debate to Mike Pence in 2020, which is why all that anyone remembers about it is that at one point a fly landed on his hair. And the Tulsi Gabbard effect which led to the Harris presidential campaign’s collapse is still very much in her head.

All this sets up a debate where Harris will have to accomplish a lot more than Donald Trump, who really just needs to run it back for a repeat performance from June.

Harris performed well in her first Democrat primary debate in 2019, showing her prosecutor experience going after Joe Biden. But in her very next appearance, Tulsi Gabbard effectively dismembered Harris’s campaign in about one minute.

She can land a hit or two now and then — but she has a glass jaw.

“ARE YOU HIS DAUGHTER?”

🚨HOLY SH!T🚨

This is an unearthed ABC profile of San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown in 1995.

Your jaw is about to hit the floor… pic.twitter.com/W6oO30AUY6

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 10, 2024

“No, I’m not.”

Indeed.

SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE: The Real Story About Russian Interference Is How Stupid the Left Thinks You Are.

CHANGE MORE OF THE SAME: Putin loyalists set to win local elections in war-affected Russian regions.

Supporters of President Vladimir Putin and his war in Ukraine were set to win gubernatorial races across Russia, according to early vote counts on Sunday, including in Kursk where Ukrainian forces have seized control of some towns and territory.

Russia’s three-day local and regional elections came to an end on Sunday evening, with voters expected to elect Kremlin-backed candidates in all 21 gubernatorial races, as well as legislative assembly members in 13 regions and city council officials across the country.

Results of the tightly controlled elections are already being interpreted in Russia as a vote of confidence in Putin and his operation in Ukraine, now in its third year – just as was the election in March that extended his presidential term and voting a year ago.

Were the elections legitimate? Almost certainly not. Does it matter? Sadly, also almost certainly not.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Polaris Dawn Goes Where No Man Has Gone… for a Long Time.

FROM “YES SHE CAN!” TO “YES SHE DID!” IN EIGHT SHORT YEARS: Too Ironic to Check: Did Kamala Plagiarize … Joe Biden?

HISTORY: Get Kamala Harris Into the White House With This One Weird 184-Year-Old Trick. “It is an old and venerable American political trick that has worked more than once before: sell the candidate like soap flakes with a campaign that is long on excitement and short on specifics.”

THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA Postpones Upcoming Mars Mission, Citing Delays With Bezos’s Big Rocket.

“The decision was made to avoid significant cost, schedule, and technical challenges associated with potentially removing fuel from the spacecraft in the event of a launch delay, which could be caused by a number of factors,” NASA wrote in a statement.

EscaPADE will use two identical spacecraft to study how solar wind interacts with Mars’ magnetic environment, and learn how it drives the atmospheric escape of the Red Planet, according to NASA.

NASA decided not to fuel the two spacecraft in case New Glenn isn’t ready for launch, avoiding the costly task of removing the fuel. The launch of the EscaPADE mission has to take place when Earth and Mars are aligned. “This is an important mission for NASA, and it’s critical we have sufficient margin in our prelaunch work to ensure we are ready to fly a tight planetary window,” Bradley Smith, NASA’s launch services office director, said in a statement.

Blue Origin has been developing its New Glenn rocket for more than a decade, with its inaugural launch initially planned for 2020.

The next launch window opens in March, assuming New Glenn is finally ready by then.

SUBTLY CHANGING HER TUNE: Is This the Sign Pelosi Doesn’t Think Harris Can Win?

THEY CAN’T WIN IF THEY CAN’T CHEAT: DOJ issues warning as GOP states try to clean noncitizens from voter rolls.

The Justice Department issued a warning to states Monday to tread lightly in trying to clean up their election systems of bogus names and ineligible voters, firing a shot across the bow of GOP-led states that have been trying to erase noncitizens from their rolls.

Department officials also released a web video pleading with people to come forward with stories if they think they have been “improperly” removed.

In new guidance to states, the department said federal law allows states to clean their rolls, but it must be done within strict guidelines and only for approved reasons such as a voter has moved out of the jurisdiction, has died or has requested removal.

“Ineligible to vote” is not a Democrat concern.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Good Riddance to the Cheneys and All Their Squishy Ilk. “The Cheneys and all of the other Bush remnants don’t have any principles, they’re simply having a years-long temper tantrum because they know that their once-special place in Grand Old Party no longer exists. If the party ever does return to something that is acceptable to the mentally unwell Never Trump crowd, the country probably won’t see another Republican president.”