Robot Saves the Day at Radiation Lab

An anonymous reader writes "Nature.com is reporting that records released this week by the US defense department read almost like a bad movie plot. Back in October a high-security radiation lab had a cylinder filled with radiation get trapped in its delivery tube network. Fortunately a specially designed bomb-disposal robot was able to retrieve the canister before the radiation was able to eat its way free.

Comments

Radiation - Seems to be a recurring problem.

[Ruff_ilb]

First the "Robot Saves Troops" story and now this. Pretty cool how robots are actually helping us nowadays.

"By now, the robot had been in the radiation zone for 90 minutes. The team decided to regroup, but the robot's electronics had failed and it was rooted to the spot. Thankfully, the team had tied a rope around the machine, and it was hauled in, almost knocking over a radiation shield in the process."

This part sounds remarkably familiar...

"On the third day, and after three weeks of continuous warning sirens..."

Whoah. It took them THREE DAYS? I'm glad this wasn't (obviously) a really serious problem. If it were some sort of radiation based bomb, they'd get fried.

From reading these two articles, it seems that if we could somehow shield these robots from outside radiation, these jobs would be done in a flash.

Unfortunately, we need them to recieve radation because if they DON'T, we can't communicate with them.

Now, I'm not a physicist, but might a Faraday Cage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage) built with an appropriately sized mesh do the job? Just as a microwave lets some radiation out (we can see the burrito cooking inside) while keeping the harmful radiation in (we don't get toasted by the microwaves), couldn't this be used to do the reverse, that is, allow communication in while shielding the robot from radiation?

I realize that these cages must be in a specific shape to work correctly, but if the core components at least, can be shielded, this go a long way towards solving our problems.

Heck, the arms and stuff we can even make (god forbid) mechanical, perhaps in such a way that they won't get owned by the radiation at all.

Re:Radiation - Seems to be a recurring problem.

[ajwitte]

Now, I'm not a physicist, but might a Faraday Cage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage) built with an appropriately sized mesh do the job? Just as a microwave lets some radiation out (we can see the burrito cooking inside) while keeping the harmful radiation in (we don't get toasted by the microwaves), couldn't this be used to do the reverse, that is, allow communication in while shielding the robot from radiation?

A Faraday cage would only be effective against EM waves, not against particle emissions.

Inspired by Actual Events

[pete-classic]

The blockbuster event of Summer 2006: Robot Hero

Starring Ben Affleck as the fucking robot.

In Soviet Russia robot sends YOU in.

[AHuxley]

Mayak, where the Soviet Union pumped out tens of tons of plutonium for nuclear weapons. Some info on how the Soviets fixed the 'it got stuck' problems - no fancy robots for them. http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=so9 9larin "A complete repair would have taken at least 12 months..." ""That meant that the irradiated uranium fuel had to be pulled up by hand into the central hall of the reactor and placed in a special storage area. Then, when the repair was finished, the elements had to be loaded back into the reactor. Over time, we unloaded and reloaded 39,000 fuel elements. All of the plant's personnel took part in this work and they received huge doses of radiation. The repairs were finished in two months." "several hundred kilograms of freshly irradiated nuclear fuel got stuck--men from everywhere in the plant were called out, and one after another they used long steel rods to push the elements into the apparatus. The only protection they had was cotton overalls and gloves."