US To Send Radiation-Hardened Robots To Japan

CWmike writes "The United States is sending specialized robots to Japan to help officials there get control of the Fukushima nuclear power plants damaged in this month's devastating earthquake and tsunami. Dr. Peter Lyons, an acting assistant secretary for nuclear energy with the DoE, said the robots, which could be sent into areas that would be dangerous for humans to enter because of high radiation levels, could begin to give officials readings on the environment inside the nuclear power plants. Lyons told the US Senate on Tuesday, 'We are moving expeditiously to ship not only the robots but also operators who perhaps will be used to train Japanese operators. We don't know yet how close the operators will need to be to the site.' Asked about getting information about the state of the damaged reactors, Lyons said the robots could provide some information. 'Certainly not all we need, but some,' he said."

Comments

Re:Here's a good question...

[Wyatt Earp]

Other American robots were already sent, or it was at least reported, a week ago.

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-03-23/tech/robots.japan.relief_1_packbot-irobot-ground-zero?_s=PM:TECH

The reason why this or that wasn't done sooner is because the Japanese didn't ask for it, and despite what you may think about American foreign policy, the US isn't just going to muscle into an internal Japanese matter and tell a Japanese utility company what to do.

Just flying power generators in wouldn't help once they ran out of fuel, thats part of the problem at Fukushima, the backup generators ran out of fuel.

Re:Strangely, Japan doesn't seem to have such robo

[rubycodez]

They key here is "radiation hardened", the robots and cameras will both be so, they are from Idaho National Laboratory, the nation's Nuclear R&D facility. Your PC or typical hobby type remote controlled gear would go ape-shit in a high rad environment from charged particles being created in the silicon.

The problems with TEPCO and the current crisis will continue with or without the former CEO, as they have for decades

Re:Mark this one for the history books, folks.

[gad_zuki!]

These are radiation hardened industrial robots. Not grandma diaper changing, go playing, receptionist robots.

The iRobot 710 Warrior isn't interested in managing your manga collection or cooking you ramen noodles.

iRobot also sent a 510 packbot. In fact, the 710 can carry 510 packbots on its back and deploy they through openings (windows, holes, etc). A little Skynety, but fun.

Re:robot boner

[sconeu]

I can't tell if you're serious or not, but here goes..

IC are sensitive to external radiation. rad-hardened robots use circuitry and components that have been rad-hardened.

That's why, for example, you can't just throw the latest Pentium Whatever into the Space Shuttle's avionics, because a stray alpha or beta particle, and ZAP -- the chip ain't working right.