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Japanese Robots Await Call To Action
Kyusaku Natsume writes with this excerpt from a Kyodo News report on the robots Japan has available on standby to work at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi plant:
"Japanese robots designed for heavy lifting and data collection have been prepared for deployment at irradiated reactor buildings of the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power station, where US-made robots have already taken radiation and temperature readings as well as visual images at the crippled facility via remote control. ... Enryu (rescue dragon) was developed in the aftermath of the magnitude-7.3 Great Hanshin Earthquake that hit the Kobe area in 1995. Designed to engage in rescue work, the remote-controlled robot has two arms that can lift objects up to 100 kg. It has 'undergone training' at the Kitakyushu municipal fire department in Fukuoka Prefecture."
Rise up...and attack our nuclear overlords!
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Why don't they wait another six months or so? What's the rush?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Seriously. Does anyone know? I was really surprised that much of the work the plant workers (police, firemen, and military) were doing was not replaced by robots after a few days -- while there were technical jobs that surely called for specialized workers onsite, holding a hose to spray water or flying over the site, seem like tasks where humans need not have been exposed and robots/drones could help. Also any stories of robots being deployed for search and rescue?
But not as horrible a death.
... Japan is enlisting US-made robots to help
... that a nation that has robot toilets would take this long to think of using robots for this job. Although to be fair, it never crossed my mind either, and I've spent the last 5 years trying to convince my wife that a roomba is actually a good idea.
Since you're AC I won't burn a mod point to mark you troll. But really, turn off the computer and pick up a book. Nothing good is rubbing off on you from the Internet and you're not making a positive contribution to it.
I want my Gundam...
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Nothing good is rubbing off on you from the Internet and you're not making a positive contribution to it.
And yet nothing good has come from your post. You didn't explain in what way the OP was wrong. You didn't offer an alternate theory. You just said for him/her to go away.
The exchange of ideas is the second best thing about the internet. The OP was doing just that. It doesn't have to be an idea that you agree with, because that gives you the opportunity to examine the flaws and raise other ideas for further discussion. It might even make you think.
You should try it some time.
skynet awakens.
Actually, there are huge remote controlled grapples and trucks on site and they have been there for weeks already, carting away debris. The problem is that they don't look like robots. They look just like grapples and trucks carting away debris...
How can there be a symmetrical docking without Hyoryu?
"Japanese Robots Await Call To Action"
By whom? SKYNET of course
So like many governments around the world the government of Japan found investing in infrastructure "too expensive."
So we'll tap your ample bank account the next time Japan needs to upgrade its nuclear plants? Where do you think the money will come from? There's way too many economically ignorant people who think Other Peoples' Money is free and that all we need to do to fix something is spend more OPM on it.
Let's hope the robot is hardened against ionizing radiation. Otherwise instead of "Hasta la vista, baby" it's more like "Dave, my mind is going..."
The problem with your notion is that there are people getting rich running these companies poorly, and other people making money off their running them poorly (investors.) And neither the people running the companies poorly nor the investors tend to bear the responsibility for what is done with the investors' money.
Here in my part of the world Pacific Bell squandered money earmarked for infrastructure without actually improving it more than was absolutely necessary to provide government mandated minimum service limits, which basically means you can make scratchy, shitty voice calls, except in areas which were lucrative to improve. Meanwhile PG&E has done the same and not long ago we had a gas main explode in an area which PG&E had marked for further monitoring and service, and then done neither monitoring nor service. People being what they are, I can only imagine the same is true in Japan. You can't tell me that a privileged few didn't profit from making the idiot decision to split Japan's power grid in two in the first place, either. I would bet almost any amount of money that someone or someones has profited greatly from simply not updating Japan's infrastructure. It's true here, why not there? My perception is that Japan set out to learn all they could from us after WWII.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They're not robots, but remote controlled machines.
Here in my part of the world Pacific Bell squandered money earmarked for infrastructure without actually improving it more than was absolutely necessary to provide government mandated minimum service limits
For our information, he's talking about California (which contains the complete service area of PG&E), which is working hard to become yet another third world shithole. So why are you complaining when Pacific Bell does what it is paid to do? Don't put those incentives in place and Pac Bell won't do them. Common sense really.
Meanwhile PG&E has done the same and not long ago we had a gas main explode in an area which PG&E had marked for further monitoring and service, and then done neither monitoring nor service.
I'm so surprised when a business doesn't do stuff that's not in its interests to do. In a place like California, monitoring and service increases your liability in case of accident.
I was going to say something comforting about nuclear power. But where you live, you probably shouldn't have a technology that dangerous especially with the incentives and disincentives that California provides. So sure, get rid of those nuclear plants. You probably don't have a society that can responsibly run one.
People being what they are, I can only imagine the same is true in Japan. You can't tell me that a privileged few didn't profit from making the idiot decision to split Japan's power grid in two in the first place, either. I would bet almost any amount of money that someone or someones has profited greatly from simply not updating Japan's infrastructure. It's true here, why not there? My perception is that Japan set out to learn all they could from us after WWII.
Maybe you should read up on what caused the power line split. Basically, it started that way in the late 19th Century because one side used European systems and the other used US. It's just an example of how long term standards can persist even when it's clear that full adoption of one standard would be better.
My perception is that Japan set out to learn all they could from us after WWII.
That's been true since around 1853, when the US forced Japan to trade with the rest of the world. Japan's progress since that time has been remarkable. But Japan is not California. While they do have serious problems dating from their Keynesian-like attempts to recover from their serious recession of 1990, they don't have the Californian melodrama that comes about when politics mixes with business.
It is indicative of the gravity of the situation that the Japanese have not accepted any of the offers of radiation hardened robots designed for nuclear incidents such as this.
The most logical explanation is that the situation is known to be impossible, so why accept foreign robots and the obligations that go with them just to be further embarrassed.
No work can be done in the facility until the radioactive lake in the plant, currently about 1300x80x20 ft is drained, which will not be until year end at best. After all, no one has swimming robots for nuclear cleanup.
So it is a waste of time to fulminate about the slow cleanup, because it is paced by the need to build holding tanks and a big radioactive water treatment facility, expected to start work by the end of May.
just in case......
Obviously, the robots want to set up their base of operations in a place humans fear to tread.