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."

Comments

Why now?

[oldhack]

Why don't they wait another six months or so? What's the rush?

What took so long?

[ghetto2ivy]

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?

Re:What took so long?

[FooAtWFU]

TFA discusses that they're not sure how well it will operate in an environment with radiation present (it does no good if it stops working in the middle of the plant because the electronics got zapped). It sounds like they haven't figured out all the logistics about keeping it from spreading radioactive materials around, either. (Presumably it needs to come out of the plant at some point, if only for refueling/maintenance).

Re:What took so long?

[Kyusaku Natsume]

For example, they could find the same troubles than the guys at Sandia labs trying to fix a stuck source of radiation with a M2 robot:
http://www.physorg.com/news9093.html

Having random plastic parts of your robot melting because they are not good to use inside a gamma ray oven is really bad. That electronics need radiation shielding is a know problem, but the performance of the rest of the pieces of equipment is something that they would know until they test it in the field or in a radiation test chamber.

Re:What took so long?

[khallow]

Amazing, isn't it?

Only to someone who doesn't have a clue what's going on. Every time we get one of these superficial stories that talks about some minor goof up in the Fukushima recovery/clean up, we get drama from the armchair engineers who remain eager to second guess things. My suspicion is that these guys have been showered with offers of robotic support from all over the world. They'll just have to test this stuff and see what works and what doesn't.

The thing is, the accident is over. Perhaps it will amount to something significant, but that hasn't happened yet. What they're doing now is radioactivity containment and repair of the systems for cooling the cores.

There isn't any research in how to react to such an "eventuality", because the industry doesn't want to know. It is just not supposed to happen.

This is the research. Learn by doing. People seem to ignore that there has been perhaps three other accidents comparable to Fukushima in the history of civilian power generation (as opposed to experimental reactors and military power). None of those accidents have much in common with Fukushima (all three were heavy on human operator error and light on magnitude 9 earthquakes).

And when you have accidents that rare, what do you do? Make your own accidents? That's what they did with Chernobyl, after all.

That's how an industry in the hands of the Titanic syndrome looks like.

And clueless person bases their perception of "an industry" on a crap movie? Say it ain't so!

Re:What took so long?

[Stellian]

you are saying nothing happened?

I'd say that's fairly accurate - nothing compared to the hype and panic at least. No one died from radiation sickness. There was a single worker who died after being hit by a crane, but that's an industrial accident and it's not correlated with the nuclear nature of the plant; if you hit a gas-powered plant, hydroelectric dam or huge wind farm with a 9.0 earthquake + tsunami and you can also expect casualties. As it turns out, it was much safer to be inside the nuclear plant than on the beach when the tsunami hit.
There were also two workers who received a dangerous radiation level (they recovered), and have a higher cancer risk with a few percentage higher than the average guy. Assuming they do die of cancer in the next 10-20 years (and that's fairly unlikely) we`re still looking exceptionally good compared with the tens of thousands of victims of the tsunami.

The bulk of the radiation was released as:
- airborne gases during the hydrogen explosions
- activated water, dumped into sea

The activated water quickly dilutes to background radiation level when dissolved in the vastness of the ocean. The lack of radioactive dust means that the exclusion zone is temporary and there will be little permanent soil or groundwater contamination, unlike Chernobyl. The bulk of radiation was released as Iodine-131 which halves it's radiation output every 8 days. And that means a 10.000 fold reduction after 3 months. Which further means that once the exclusion zone is dropped (in about 6 months), there will be probably no significant danger to live near the plant (but that further depends on the radioactive Strontium and Cesium levels, which depend on the weather and soil chemistry, so it's a bit early to speculate).

Sorry, no mutants to see here, move along...

Re:Grapples and trucks

[Securityemo]

Cue instant feeling of terror having a truck driving towards you and you suddenly notice the driver's seat is empty.