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Fukushima Robot Operator Tells His Story
An anonymous reader writes "An anonymous robot operator at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant has kept a blog describing in candid detail his day-to-day life at the crippled facility, including robot training exercises and actual radiation-survey and clean-up missions. The blog was recently deleted, but some copies existed around the web and IEEE Spectrum has translated and published portions of it in English. The blog shows that although the operators use remote-controlled robots, they have to work in areas of high radiation, using protective gear and shielded trucks. They also rely on a great deal of improvisation, and there have been a few incidents that put the robot missions at risk."
...interviewing a robot
and we thought we'd wait until after this blog is deleted to report on it
Yeah, I misread the headline too. Scared the shit out of me...
Until March 2011, in our minds, Japan was the leading country when it comes to robots (remember all these Sony exhibitions...).
I cannot help but remember the Tepco wait-and-see attitude after the March 11 tsunami: we were all wondering
- why do they send people instead of robots to work within the power plant perimeter?
- why Tepco doesn't manage to have an army of robots ready to intervene?
- why Tepco took that much time to require international help in this regard?
However, I'm afraid the problem is not only technical.
In these huge Japanese organizations decisions taken at the highest level are often based on a kind of "event grid".
When the "event" matches a deja-vu scenario, or a well-known anticipated situation, the solution will be implemented fast and clean.
But when an unexpected event arises, an incredibly slow and possibly inadequate response is likely to be given.
I always thought "this is Japan - like it or leave it...". But when it comes to radiation in a power plant, I worry.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
After paging through several stories of how exciting it is to learn new skills - even while opposed by dysfunctional management, impossible deadlines, the occasional mistake, and co-workers who insist on running over network cabling, the blog ends with:
Yes, we do. Some things in the technology business - and in humor - are universal.
Thank you, Anonymous Robot Operator-san, for the work you and your team are doing, and for your diligence and honesty in documenting it.
One thing I got out of reading the shorter summary, is that it might be a good idea to build a very compact robot whose sole purpose was to be positioned to relay wireless control signals - or else have wireless nodes that could be dropped behind the robot in a few places to extend range.
Really interesting.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A supposedly intelligent person claimed that blacks are at least as intelligent as whites because they are so "innovative." His example was that blacks would take an old steel oil-drum (which whites considered to be rubbish) and turn it into something useful-- a steel drum. Leaving aside whether or not a steel-drum band of muds is, in any way, shape or form, "useful," let's look at his argument.
The white man had made the steel oil-drum as a means of transporting oil around the world. This involved creating an industrial technology, and developing mining industry to a point where oil wells could be sunk in the North Sea (or Gulf of Mexico), and crude oil successfully removed. Then a world-wide trading network had to be established. Let us gloss over the need for international economic transactions, international credit and banking, electronic money transfers, telephonic and satellite communications, and the stable economies and governments needed to make this possible.
Instead, let's look at the need to produce oil tankers to transport the oil. The need for computers to navigate the ships, the level of technology needed to produce the ships, the schools needed to educate those who will serve on the ships, the engineering skills and training for those making them.
Let us now think about the products kept going by the oil. The plastics, the chemicals, the cars, and so on. And all this on a world-wide scale, over generations. And we haven't even touched on road and rail systems, intensive farming and refrigeration to feed those in the industrialised cities, the factories, the building trade, power generation, written and computerised record keeping, or a thousand and one other things, all associated with the world oil production and trade.
And of all this, the oil drum is a minor by-product, a practical but simple and fairly primitive form of storage whilst in temporary transit.
And if, by some chance or accident, one of these oil drums washes up on the shore of dusky Africa, what do the native inhabitants do? Use it in their own oil industry? No. Use it as a spring-board towards future development? No. They turn it upside-down and hit it with sticks! Call me pedantic, but that doesn't make them my equal. Not one of the dozens of items I listed above has appeared in Africa, ever. Not even writing. A continent surrounded by ocean, watered by massive lakes and rivers, and the black natives never dreamt a sail. Thousands of miles of flat grasslands, and they never fashioned a wheel, nor domesticated animals. Surrounded by stone, they never constructed a building better than a hut. Acres of diamonds and the world's largest gold fields, and they never glanced at them until shown their beauty by white men. And all this for tens of thousands of years, thousands of generations living with no change, no progress.
But they are our "equal" or so the brainwashed politically correct morons would have you believe.
... today is North Anna, Virginia
fucking market Learn what mistak3s the point more nned to join the
read it ... far too optimistic, heroic characterizations, lauding the technology. But capturing the feel of terror while fighting the clock. From Sci-Fi's Golden Age, when we predicted that everyone would be driving nuclear-powered cars by now.
The blog makes several interesting observations. First, operators having to be close to the plant because of communication difficulties. Now I realize I'm being an armchair engineer here, but the first thing I'd have done was to assemble longer cables, or find other means to increase the distance.
If this isn't possible, maybe it's an indication that we need a different control mechanism for these robots. A proprietary protocol would be more difficult to jury-rig than e.g. Ethernet.
Second, shielding. Is there no way to shield the operators? If you have to put a control cabin in a high-radiation environment, why not stack sandbags, drums of water, concrete blocks etc. around it? If necessary, use shipping containers to prefabricate the shielding, so you can minimize exposure time during the installation of the cabin.
Third, the buildings are difficult to access with robots. Tethered robots won't work in elevators (if the elevators even work). I get that you usually want to minimize the holes in the containment structure, but perhaps there should be a bit more foresight going into designing these buildings?
... bad day yesterday?
The author, who goes by the initials S.H., also used the blog to vent his frustrations with inept supervisors and unreasonable schedules, though he maintains a sense of humor, describing in one post how he punched a hole on a wall while driving a robot and, in another entry, how a drunken worker slept in his room by mistake
Is it just me, or does this seem very, very soviet? Bureaucratic impediments, incompetent people in high positions, drunken workers around highly dangerous areas, and a weird sense of humor around all of it... haven't we seen this already?
These aren't robots; robots operate independently of an operator. These are just fancy waldoes.
(source: RUR)
For real updates on Fukushima and nuclear tech in general see http://fairewinds.com/updates
I wonder if there is really a market for these because they could be easy and cheap to build.
That's true, but it's no detraction from there being a market since someone has to put that all together, along with putting it together in such a way that control is pretty robust even in very radioactive environments...
It's probably more of a sub-buisness for the people that make the robots though, I don't know that you could succeed long as an independent company. Plus you would need startup capital to buy the various popular remote robots to ensure you could pass command signals properly. But if you were really good perhaps one of the robotic companies would buy you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Doumo Arigatou Mr. Robaato Opareitoru.
M
Browse at 1. You'll thank me later.