Radiation Robot Makes Troops Safer

Darkman, Walkin Dude wrote to mention a plucky little radiation-proof robot working to make life easier for folks in the military. From the article: "By this time an hour and a half had gone by, and the team was temporarily out of ideas. Phil had estimated that the robot could remain ambulatory in the radiation field for only 50 minutes, and in fact the robot's lower portion was no longer responding to commands. The RAP team, as a precaution against this very circumstance, working with White Sands personnel had tied a rope to M2 before sending it into the work area. The rope, attached to a RAP team winch 100 feet outside the structure, ensured the robot could be hauled out if radiation damaged its drive unit. But radiation shields now blocked a direct haul. M2 was hemmed in. Using a ten-foot-long pole and standing at the edge of the field (which fanned out like a flashlight beam, strongest at its center and weakest at its edges), team members hooked and then tugged at the rope hauling M2. The deflection of the rope's pull slid the robot around a moveable radiation shield without knocking it over. The RAP team's winch then pulled the robot directly out. "

Comments

What?

[thesnarky1]

The summary says "radiation-proof robot", but TFA says "Phil had estimated that the robot could remain ambulatory in the radiation field for only 50 minutes, and in fact the robot's lower portion was no longer responding to commands."

I'ma call shenanigans on this one. And "making life easier for folks in the military?!" In ONE instance, this helped what happened to be a Military research plant. But the poster makes it seem like this'll win the war in Iraq. Seriously, this is a HORRIBLE scew to put on the article.

Rant aside, I think this is very interesting problem solving. Especially the 10-foot poll bit. Just goes to show that technology can't win everything. Not by a long shot. Interesting problem, interesting solution, both very complicated.

emphatic re-iteration

[rheotaxis]

Article says: "The cause was a stuck cylinder the size of a restaurant salt shaker but considerably more deadly: Gamma rays from the cobalt-60 it contained could kill a man in half a minute."

I have to ask...when did restaurants start serving salt that's only somewhat less deadly than cobalt-60?

Re:Nuclear Power

[TubeSteak]

The cylinder normally arrived and departed through a metal sleeve, driven by pneumatic air. The method resembled that used by drive-up banks, where pneumatic air drives a cylinder containing transaction paperwork first one way and then the other.

At White Sands, a pressure of approximately 20 psi was normally enough to move the container from its secure resting place to its forward exposed, or live, position; the same air pressure in the opposite direction sent it back. Over previous decades, on the rare occasions when the cylinder stuck, technicians had merely increased air pressure to send it on its way.

But this problem was different. From the safety of their control room, technicians increased air pressure in steps until they had reached 50 times normal, or 1000 psi, but they could not budge the cylinder.

...

...Inspection revealed the problem: Forceful early attempts to blow the cylinder back apparently had bent the straight switch into a right angle...

Idiots.

Perhaps this event will help set a new model for operational safety. I can't believe how stupid those operators were. It never occurred to them to send out a fucking maintanence tech to inspect the mechanism and figure out why it was sticking?

I seriously doubt that the manual (it's the DoD, you know they have a manual for this) included "up the PSI" as a way to resolve the issue.

I don't think anyone should be fired over this, but i expect them to review all their procedures for problem solving with respect to their radioactive materials.

/Rant

As for nucleur power plants, I think it'd be best not to increase the use of remote robots. The more human inspection is required, the more shielding they have to use, which imho is a good thing.