Where Were the Robots In Fukushima Crisis?

mdsolar writes "When the huge Fukushima nuclear disaster first started, many on Slashdot were calling for robots to come to the rescue. This is the story of why our overlords were caught napping. Not to worry though, ¥1 billion has been allocated to correct the robot problem. They will be properly welcomed."

Comments

in Sci-Fi movies?

[vleo]

I got serious doubts about Japan in reality vs. Japan in virtuality after these nuclear disaster events.

No incentive

[Hentes]

With nuclear accidents being extremely rare there is no point in designing robots specifically for them. Those models would most likely become obsolete without ever being used.

Re:No incentive

[Capitaine]

Nuclear disasters are not the only use case of such robots. Fire-fighting, post-earthquake/terror attack assistance etc. apart from the shielding, not much changes. An Asimo or any other humanoïd robot doesn't help much in those cases. They are good for shows or interaction with human but not for operation in hard terrains.

Re:No incentive

[Opportunist]

Well, there's something to be said about money well spent even despite never being necessary. By that logic, I should probably dismantle the fire alarms in my house since the chance that their detectors go bad before the first fire happening is pretty high.

Re:No incentive

[Feyshtey]

You should defund the military while you're at it.

Re:No incentive

[maxwell demon]

I wasn't under the impression that the military isn't used.

Re:No incentive

[maxwell demon]

With nuclear accidents being extremely rare there is no point in designing robots specifically for them. Those models would most likely become obsolete without ever being used.

An "obsolete" robot is better than no robot.

Re:No incentive

[theshowmecanuck]

With nuclear accidents being extremely rare there is no point in designing robots specifically for them. Those models would most likely become obsolete without ever being used.

So you've factored in 'possibility'. What about 'impact'. So are you saying that nuclear accidents are so rare that it is OK to kill off or severely impact or shorten the lives of dozens or more people whenever it does happen? That's a pretty stupid notion if you ask me.

And what is it about ionizing radiation that changes so much that will make a robot capable of general mechanical work in a radioactive environment obsolete? The only major thing(s) that will change is likely to be the controllers/software. And why couldn't a hardened robot be useful in other scenarios like rescue? I can't see why building a robot with two or more arms capable of using tools, carrying buckets up stairs, or people in rescue work, or doing general building maintenance, etc. is not a useful endeavor. The function is not likely to change, it is how well it does it and how well it can function autonomously (not necessarily the same thing). Especially if you can make the functional arms or arm ends modular to replace tools as they improve, and not the whole robot.

I think the focus on cute 'take care of me' robot puppies and human mimicking 'care robots' is important precisely because of the coolness factor. People are willing to fund stuff that looks cool and can help people, or is simply cool. That helps drive research and improvements. But they need to start making autonomous Awesom-o's do more than be cute, or put on human expressions. They need to start focusing more on function than on form.

Re:No incentive

[Samantha Wright]

Actually, it says in the article that sufficient shielding more than doubled the weight of one Japanese robot used at Fukushima. Also, the normal wireless remote control was useless inside of the reactor buildings and had to be replaced with a cable that eventually snapped. Robots that have to properly accommodate these two requirements do require some specialized engineering, it would appear.

Re:No incentive

[AmiMoJo]

The human interaction stuff is actually quite important for rescue operations where people are involved. You want a robot that is fast, able to move over difficult terrain and very strong so it can move heavy objects, yet gentle enough to handle human beings and understand how to avoid accidentally hurting them.

Re:No incentive

[__aaltlg1547]

When evaluating the cost of preparing for unlikely but extremely costly or dangerous events, people routinely get it wrong. Either they drastically overestimate or underestimate the likelihood of the event occurring.

Let's say the estimated cost of a meltdown was pegged at $1 billion and 100 lives. And lets say you can add a feature or siting to the reactor design that cuts the risk of meltdown from 1% to 1/2% over its lifetime. That feature is worth spending $5 million and 5 lives.

Re:No incentive

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Radiation-hardened robots would be useful in routine plant maintenance, for areas where humans can only stay for minutes at a time.

There's plenty of safety-related hardware at a nuclear plant that may never get used: a lot of it is more expensive than a few robots.

Re:No incentive

[Hentes]

So you've factored in 'possibility'. What about 'impact'. So are you saying that nuclear accidents are so rare that it is OK to kill off or severely impact or shorten the lives of dozens or more people whenever it does happen? That's a pretty stupid notion if you ask me.

Every industry has a risk. It's sad when accidents happen, but we can't defend against everything. If they become widespread, those hospital robots could help far more people than nuclear accidents would claim.

Re:No incentive

[fnj]

Agree entirely. Knee-jerk pro-nuke polyannas are just as witless and unhelpful as anti-nuke chicken littles.

I doubt if the guy ever worked for NASA. Risk assessment for Airbus maybe.

Re:No incentive

[Maxmin]

Disasters are rare-ish, but accidents are not. Robots for removing highly radioactive leaked water and other materials would be helpful.

Re:No incentive

[theshowmecanuck]

Risks sure, but you still haven't recognized that risks have at least two factors to take into consideration: probability and impact. Low probability low impact I can see handling it on a case by case basis. Low probability and high impact in terms of human beings being killed cleaning up the mess? I'd say you prepare for it pretty damned fully up front. There is no reason for people to die or get cancer because some board member of a company determined that it didn't happen enough. And nuclear accidents are recognized risks that the nuclear industry takes into account. Otherwise they wouldn't spend a millions to build containment domes over the reactors. I would bet that those huge reinforced buildings cost tens of millions of dollars to build and are built precisely in case of what you mistakenly call low risks. If they were low risk (i.e. low probability low impact) they wouldn't spend millions to build them. And we can see what happened when someone used your definition of risk: Chernobyl. It didn't have a containment dome. That is why the radiation was so wide spread. And what about the tens of millions spent on emergency backup generators and pumps and all the other systems... in one plant. It costs billions of dollars to build a nuclear generating facility. A lot of that is on safety systems because the believe a low probability event has a high enough impact that they will spend probably 9 figures to mitigate or prevent any possible accident. In the construction of one facility they dwarf the funding that could provide the kinds of robots we are talking about by orders of magnitude. No you can't protect against everything, but you do protect and plan for things with high impact. And besides, robots like these could be used for hazardous jobs in day to day operations as well. It is win win.

Re:No incentive

[Idbar]

With cruise ships accidents being extremely rare, I guess the number of rafts should follow the Titanic's design premises. After all one accident in many is not worth the expense.

Re:No incentive

[pev]

I can poke a few holes in your argument there... :

Those models would most likely become obsolete without ever being used.

1) The nuclear power plants designs don't change significantly over their decades long lifespans. The robot is a tool. If it's designed to do the job in the first place, it's ability to do so does not become obsolete any more than the power plant itself does (or other proper tech such as the space shuttle or 747's over their lifespans). Newer tech may become available that improves on the old but if it can do the job, it can do the job. Don't think with a (modern) consumer electronics mindset!.

With nuclear accidents being extremely rare there is no point in designing robots specifically for them

2) Just because a situation is extremely rare doesn't mean you shouldn't plan to handle it. Consider : Flight control systems, vaccines, stock market crashes. You need to plan because the consequences of not planning are severe. Risk Assessment Fundamentals : Risk = Severity x Exposure x Probability.

3) Do you really want to be at the wrong end of the "exceedingly rare" incidence of these failing? If you were there you'd damn well want a robot. Read any first person accounts from people involved in the Chernobyl cleanup and then state in honesty that there's "no point".

Re:No incentive

[Wyatt Earp]

The US had developed them.

Re:No incentive

[cusco]

Seems like no one talked to the folks at JPL. Galileo has been functioning in the radiation hell which is Jupiter's close environs for years, and somehow I don't think they're using a cable to communicate with it . . .

Re:No incentive

[Samantha Wright]

Well, the next time you design a nuclear power plant, you can make sure to do away with all of the radiation shielding that the facilities included that blocked the robot's radio. Then, maybe, your friends at the JPL will be able to help you. RTFA! :)

Re:No incentive

[cusco]

Ah. Had to go back and re-read it twice before I saw the line that said "the robot's existing wireless system would have malfunctioned". They're probably right, a standard BrandX wireless router wouldn't have worked, but one would think that they'd have been willing to cough up the money for military-grade equipment. Maybe it would have taken them too long to figure out how to integrate a new wireless system into it, makes no sense to me. But then, it makes no sense to me that they preferred to start over from scratch and do everything in-house either. There's a **LOT** of expertise available out there, including among Japanese hobbyists, that they could have tapped into and didn't.

Re:No incentive

[cusco]

Containment buildings exist for one reason: The companies were forced to build them. In the game of musical chairs that makes up the leadership positions of Corporate America every executive assumes that they'll have rotated out of that position by the time a disaster occurs and some other sociopath will be in the hot seat when it happens. The only down side would be if they hadn't unloaded their stock options by that time. If it won't improve the bottom line by the time the next time executive bonuses are issued it generally doesn't happen any more.

The only way that I could see a nuclear emergency robot being created in the US is if a number of plant operators were to band together and fund a university program to develop and build a dozen of them, and have them as a resource available for any of the sponsors to use at need. The funds could probably come out of the Public Relations budget so that Marketing could trumpet to the public how responsible they are.

Re:No incentive

[jmcvetta]

Guess they'd probably have to run the robot using the controllers it came with, rather than try to control it with random future technology. Derp!

(And yeah, good idea to keep some spare parts off-site, etc...)

It is simple

[peragrin]

Pride prevented them from acknowledging their weaknesses and thus prevented them from building robots that could go into the bad places that humans have made.

it is pretty typical japanese ignore a potential situation until you are shamed into no longer ignoring it. It is one of the few things that japan does that they are ashamed of but because they are shamed they won't fix it.

American's are alway cleaning up the mess made by others. hopefully one day someone will clean up after us American's

Re:It is simple

[swamp_ig]

American's are alway cleaning up the mess made by others. hopefully one day someone will clean up after us American's

Like inappropriate apostrophes?

Re:It is simple

[theshowmecanuck]

What the hell are you talking about? I don't see any rationalization but more a statement of pretty much universally understood Japanese behaviour. And I will say it is pretty much universally understood that America does help a lot (more than any other country) with money and manpower when natural and some man made disasters hit other countries. But I am not sure if that help comes anywhere close to the manpower and money they spend screwing other countries up with their interventional (overt and covert) foreign policies. Or whether it even comes close to making up for it either.

Re:It is simple

[khallow]

I see yet another statement of pretty much universally understood Slashdot behavior.

Re:It is simple

[fnj]

American's are alway cleaning up the mess made by others. hopefully one day someone will clean up after us American's

Hopefully America could one day clean up just one hellish mess that we generate ourselves.

Re:It is simple

[fnj]

Re-read it.

Re:Easy

[jo_ham]

You've clearly never been into the bathroom at an old people's home.

Easy

[should_be_linear]

Some of them were playing violin, while rest enjoyed walking up and down the stairs.

Standard robots are not very good with radiation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear disasters are not the only use case of such robots. Fire-fighting, post-earthquake/terror attack assistance etc. apart from the shielding, not much changes.

But the shielding is important. All your electronics and your sensors will go harvoc there. To get anything working you most likely need totally different designs.

Camaras (both analog and digital) are likely to also 'see' the radiation and thus no longer see anything, and while you can shield the inner core electronics, roboters without sensors or actors do not make much sense.

If you have to deal with high radiation, you either need very special robots. Or you need humans. They will not come back, and they might not last very long, but compared to electronics, they are suprisingly tough on a short enough time scale.

Mythbusters to the rescue!

[Gnavpot]

The comments here on /. are focused on why robots were not built in advance. But I am wondering why nothing was done in the days after the disaster.

When I heard about the attempts of cooling from the outside using fire trucks, which failed because the radiation was too high for the personnel, my first thought was:
Mythbusters can make a vehicle remote operated for a weekly TV show. The entire nation of Japan can't make a fire truck remote operated after facing a nuclear disaster?

Re:Mythbusters to the rescue!

[Asic Eng]

I'm a Mythbusters fan, but their remote-controlled vehicles suck. They don't even build-in an automatic brake when the vehicle gets out of range of the remote. Furthermore, it's damn difficult to build electronics which can operate in an environment where they are constantly subjected to intense electromagnetic radiation. IIRC the first robots they used in Chernobyl basically drove in and stopped without accomplishing anything.

Finally, the US, France and Germany offered to loan Japan suitable robots. The best thing Japan should have done right after the disaster would have been to accept these offers immediately.

Re:Mythbusters to the rescue!

[khallow]

Failure of using firetrucks has absolutely *nothing* to do with you claim, "because the radiation was too high for the personnel".

Except that well, it does. The internal configuration of the reactor is irrelevant to whether or not fire trucks were used to cool the reactor. One fire truck cannot maintain hundreds of liters per second, but enough of them can (and they were obviously using more than one fire truck). Unless no one can get close enough to operate them, which appears to be the actual problem in this case.

In addition, I imagine these trucks were part of a more comprehensive strategy and weren't expected to shoulder the cooling load by themselves. But if they aren't helping, then I imagine that made things harder for the other parts of the cooling effort that were still operating.

Re:Mythbusters to the rescue!

[WWWWolf]

Mythbusters can make a vehicle remote operated for a weekly TV show.

Except that a discerning viewer might notice they don't produce all of the material for a single episode a week. It's fairly obvious that they can spend a longer time testing a single myth than a week, if the need arises. They seem to sort of buffer their stuff on the background and have multiple bits of stuff going on at once.

So this is what they might say:
"We need a remote-controlled fire truck. How much time do you need?"
"Two weeks."
"...oh, and unlike your normal stuff, it absolutely has to work, because you can't randomly explodinate a fire truck in a residential area - which, by the way, is quite irradiated too."
"Maybe three or four weeks? We're not experts on building this stuff if it absolutely has to work under those conditions, but we can call the experts if needed."
"Let's just skip the middle man. We're calling in the experts, because we don't have that much time anyway."

Re:Mythbusters to the rescue!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually french nuclear intervention team send them 3 remote operated firetruck, a excavator, a bulldozer and 2 team of operators. They refused them for the false pretext those vehicle was unadapted. Those radiation proof remote operated vehicle already exist but for political reason they refuse to use them.

Why did the did that ? They didn't want foreign expert to have access to the site or evaluate the situation.

http://www.groupe-intra.com/index2.htm

For the mythbusters part, it's not trivial to actually build this kind of vehicle, all the electronic must be radiation proof (thing spacial grade equipment) and they are usually wire-linked because radio is unreliable in those environment.

Re:Mythbusters to the rescue!

[shiftless]

Except that well, it does. The internal configuration of the reactor is irrelevant to whether or not fire trucks were used to cool the reactor. One fire truck cannot maintain hundreds of liters per second, but enough of them can (and they were obviously using more than one fire truck). Unless no one can get close enough to operate them, which appears to be the actual problem in this case.

Except that isn't the case at all. The fire trucks were capable of supplying enough cooling water, it's just it took forever to get them on site, connected up and working due to various problems they encountered, like one truck being stuck in the mud, and hose connector issues. By the time they'd got the trucks online most of the damage was already done, except for the hydrogen explosions which came later.

I wish slashdotters would take two goddamn minutes to, say, load up Google and READ THE ACCOUNT OF WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED before spending half an hour arguing with each other over pointless trivia.

Re:Mythbusters to the rescue!

[fnj]

Mod parent up informative and insightful.

Re:Mythbusters to the rescue!

[Waccoon]

Sounds a lot like Chernobyl. Foreign scientists had virtually no access to the site for study. It took years to drill into the reactor core, with a makeshift camera strapped to a disassembled toy tank, just to look at what was inside.

Risk vs probability

[Colin Smith]

Risk includes magnitude.

INL - Robots were sent to Fukushima

[medv4380]

Robots were sent and it was on Slashdot at the time too. The problem is Robots don't work in radioactive environments unless they have been made for it. You can't harden every existing robot to radiation because they normally don't encounter that level of radiation working in a Car Manufacturing plant. Even we only have 1 facility that specializes in making that kind of equipment. If it's a matter of pride to Japan that "Their" robots didn't help they will find out that the cost to build and maintain that kind of facility is well beyond anything the private sector (Honda) will be willing to put forward.

Re:INL - Robots were sent to Fukushima

[fast turtle]

actually, it's pretty damn easy to harden a robot against radiation. It's called Magnetics and only requires a minimal amount of additional power to shield the electronics. Normal electric motors aren't as bothered by high levels of radiation as people think. What causes problems is the electronic motors and sensors tend to be fried due to eddy currents induced in the chips and circuits.

This is actually solvable through use of either basic electric motors or even better the use of hydraulics. As someone else stated, you can easily convert a firetruck to remote control as long as the electronics are shielded. It's the same principle for most of the first response robots. Simply use existing construction equipment (bob cats, bull dozers) that are mainly hydaulic in orperation and have a the electronics for the remote control is the only item needing magnetic sheilding. Keep in mind that this sheilding does not require a very strong magnetic field and with the unit having an alternator, you simply use that to provide the needed power to a small battery that ensures the electronics are continuously shielded.

Re:INL - Robots were sent to Fukushima

[K. S. Kyosuke]

actually, it's pretty damn easy to harden a robot against radiation. It's called Magnetics and only requires a minimal amount of additional power to shield the electronics. Normal electric motors aren't as bothered by high levels of radiation as people think. What causes problems is the electronic motors and sensors tend to be fried due to eddy currents induced in the chips and circuits.

What? What is this "Magnetics" and how does that protect against gamma rays? Surely not a magnetic field, as it doesn't do squat against high energy photons. And what do eddy currents have to do with high levels of radiation?

Re:INL - Robots were sent to Fukushima

[Trilkin]

I imagine the parent to be a man in clown paint.

Re:INL - Robots were sent to Fukushima

[Cassini2]

What? What is this "Magnetics" and how does that protect against gamma rays?

Most of a robot is built with some fairly old-school stuff, like steel and copper, and this is unaffected by gamma rays (in the short term). The robot moves through the use of magnetics ie: Electric Motors. It turns out that most electric motors, along with the steel and rubber used in most robots is short-term invulnerable to low intensity (and even fairly high intensity) radiation. The issue is that certain types of radiation generate electric (and magnetic) fields which play havoc with some of the fancy sensors used in the newer brushless DC motor designs. The solution is to redesign the magnetics of the robot such that they use old-school technologies which operate happily in extreme environments.

Radiation sources like gamma rays will eventually effect some of the key non-electronic systems of robots. In particular, they can break down insulation. Also, they can render the entire robot radioactive, and not safe to be around people. Prolonged exposure to high-energy sources may also damage bearing surfaces, preventing robot motion. However, long before any of this happens, the electronics will act up.

The GP poster was trying to suggest: is (a) take a regular robot, (b) install radiation protected electronics, (c) use a bunch of old-school servo-motor technologies (like DC motors and resolvers), and (d) you will have a short-term survivable rad-hardened robot.

Re:INL - Robots were sent to Fukushima

[__aaltlg1547]

It's the control systems and sensors that are vulnerable to radiation. The electromechanical systems aren't.

The Most Imporatant Questions

[assertation]

The most important questions go beyond the robots:

Why did they use a design that was pronounced risky by Rand McNally BEFORE the plant was built?

Why did they build it in an earthquake zone and in a zone vulnerable to tsunamis?

I bet a lot of of Japanese business men would love for the focus to stay on some technical failures with the robots.

Re:The Most Imporatant Questions

[sourcerror]

"Why did they build it in an earthquake zone and in a zone vulnerable to tsunamis?"

Because they didn't knew it's an earthquake zone. Plate tectonics wasn't discovered by that time.

Re:The Most Imporatant Questions

[PPH]

I think the Japanese (and the world in general) had a pretty good idea of the relationship between earthquakes and Tsunamis long before plate tectonics was understood. http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/DANIELSC/index.html

Interesting note: Some villagers on Sumatra survived the 2004 Tsunami because their mythology included stories of what happens when there's an earthquake and then the water in the bay recedes (answer: run like hell for high ground).

Re:The Most Imporatant Questions

[Asic Eng]

Why did they build it in an earthquake zone and in a zone vulnerable to tsunamis?

It's Japan, the whole country is an earthquake zone. But yeah, there was no reason to build so close to the shore. The Onagawa nuclear power plant was 75 km closer to the epicenter, but it was built at 15 meters above sea level. It was fine.

Re:The Most Imporatant Questions

[Killall -9 Bash]

Why did they build it in an earthquake zone and in a zone vulnerable to tsunamis?

They'd have a hard time building a Japanese nuclear power plant somewhere other than Japan.

Re:The Most Imporatant Questions

[frosty_tsm]

Why did they build it in an earthquake zone and in a zone vulnerable to tsunamis?

It's Japan, the whole country is an earthquake zone. But yeah, there was no reason to build so close to the shore. The Onagawa nuclear power plant was 75 km closer to the epicenter, but it was built at 15 meters above sea level. It was fine.

There is a good reason (parts delivery by ship, water available for cooling in some cases), but it needs to be weighed with the risk associated with it.

Re:The Most Imporatant Questions

[PPH]

The understanding of relationships between earthquakes and fault lines is over 100 years old. The theory of plate tectonics is about 100 years old. Much older than the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

http://www.readinessinfo.com/eqhistory.shtml

In many cases, the science of seismology confirmed the 'folk tales' surrounding earthquakes and tsunamis.

Re:The Most Imporatant Questions

[__aaltlg1547]

They also made the very serious mistake of making a reactor that would not passively quench the reaction when power was removed. That's essential to making a safe reactor no matter where you build it.

I was greatly disturbed to learn that the reactors in Japan weren't built that way. They could have been.

Re:The Most Imporatant Questions

[jrumney]

Until the Kobe quake in the 1990's, Japan's quake mitigation effort was almost entirely focused on Tokyo. You see the same happening with San Francisco in US, and Wellington in New Zealand until the Christchurch quake in 2010. Because big quakes have happened in a big city in the past, attention is concentrated on a repeat occurrence, and not so much on the same thing (or worse) happening elsewhere.

Re:The Most Imporatant Questions

[khallow]

Why did they use a design that was pronounced risky by Rand McNally BEFORE the plant was built?

RAND Corporation is not the mapmaker business.

Re:Brief reality check

[Ihmhi]

Noah was probably a dude on a raft with a couple of goats, and some writer seriously blew that shit out of proportion.

Only 1 billion?

[leptogenesis]

That's about $13 million. To put that into perspective, the Lunar X-prize robotics challenge offers prize money of $30 million; that doesn't even include team sponsorship. According to Wikipedia, the CMU robotics institute's projects alone cost more than $50 million every year. I know...financial crisis and all...but still, a billion yen is not much for robotics research.

Re:Unclear.

[Linsaran]

For a dyslexic, nuclear is unclear.

I tend to consider this as very stupid, as the dangers clearly outweigh any benefit, but I'll post this idea for the sake of protecting the heroes that have to give their lives because the idiot weasels first lied to get power and then betrayed their voters by choosing the alternative that is unsafe.

The dangers associated with nuclear power are very much analogous to flying in an airplane vs. driving a car for a long trip. Statistically speaking you're more likely to have a car acident than a plane crash. Likewise more people die every year from car acidents than plane crashes.

That said a car crash has a lot lower fatality rate than plane crashes, plenty of people walk away relatively unscathed from a car crash, and even if they don't a car crash has the potential to kill maybe a dozen people if it's really bad. On the other hand a plane crash is almost certainly fatal (assuming the plane got off of the runway), and given that most passanger carry a hundred people or more, a plane crash is a much more serious event for those involved.

There are plenty of unpublished deaths associated with coal or oil power (the primary alternatives to nuclear), mining accidents etc. (not to mention the untabulated costs of pollution and environmental damage) Compared to what, 3 major nuclear events over the past 60 years, each of which had it's costs in life and environmental damages.

The Point is that while each has it's costs in human life and damage to the environment, nuclear power generally has more devastating accidents that happen rarely, while coal and oil have much less devastating accidents that I'd wager happen much more frequently than most people are aware of (I'd even bet the total cost in human lives to be proportionally higher for coal and oil, adjusted for percentage of total power provided of course)

Re:Standard robots are not very good with radiatio

[Pi1grim]

Likely to "see the radiation"? How about reading up on the spectrum emitted. As for analog cameras — are saying there are robots that use film cameras as visual sensors? If radiation is jamming the electronics then the human sent in that environment will fry on the spot in the matter of minutes. Simple as that.

Re:Standard robots are not very good with radiatio

[cyfer2000]

Under high radiation, even oils like lubricants and hydraulic liquids can go bad very quickly. You can imagine your car running with gunk instead of oil.

Re:Unclear.

[Pi1grim]

Remote control technologies are far from being usable in case of a disaster. Look at EOD robots. That's military grade stuff, and yet they still get quite a number of malfulctions, while their robots don't have to stray far, crawl through buildings or withstand radioactivity, agressive chemicals. Automated bots would not have enough intelligence to handle the situation. So we are not quite there yet with our technologies. And I am not talking about sentient robots capable of self-sacrifice (someone is hooked on sci-fi novels and anime, huh?), but a simple automated machine that can aid the firemen, policemen or the rescue services in their dangereous as hell jobs.

It is simple

[khallow]

To me, the parent post seems an elaborate rationalization for why the argument, nuke==bad didn't win in Japan. The Japanese must be secretly ashamed of not agreeing with a Slashdot poster.

They weren't napping

[OzPeter]

The overlords were overlording over their minions.

Thats what minions are for - to do the actual work. Overlords just sit back and watch the chaos!

Re:Standard robots are not very good with radiatio

[marcosdumay]

No matter if you have some light sensing diodes, transistors or what not, add some heavy ionisation and your system will trigger all the time, as if it "saw" something...

It also doesn't matter that you use photoelectrical chemicals, like our eyes.

You are overestimating the problem radiation causes to a sensor. You can deal with it with some good averaging, like is applied on our eyes, or you can use more complex techiniques that will give even better results.

Now, the problem of radiation destroing the sensor is a big one. For solving that you'd even need specialized semiconductor fabrics. With some redundancy and shielding you can make they last longer, maybe that is good enough.

Re:Unclear.

[Dogtanian]

For a dyslexic, nuclear is unclear.

"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire

Though to call that contrived and pointless opening "witty" would be overstating it. Either your case stands on the facts, or it doesn't; third-rate wordplay merely cheapens any point you're trying to make.

Simple Reason

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pretty simple - Japan doesn't really design robots to do jobs that humans can't do. Japan designs robots so that they don't have to let foreigners into the country. Therefore, most of the robotics research has been to deal with problems introduced by an aging closed society - things like taking care of the elderly, farming or teaching English to students (though the last one is actually South Korea).

Japanese don't want any non-Japanese in their country doing these jobs (I speak from experience) but they're fine blowing billions of dollars to try and solve the problem with robots. Nuclear power plant meltdown isn't this sort of problem so there was no research funding for it.

Re:Easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of them were playing violin

Nerobot

Re:They should've asked America for assistance...

[foniksonik]

You are an idiot.

Re:Standard robots are not very good with radiatio

[Imbrondir]

While it probably creates some noise, it shouldn't be that big of a problem for a camera. One video inside Chernobyl suggests this is not an issue. Another one from a robot inside.

Guess what you missed.

[intellitech]

Here's a hint: it's an analogy.

The point is this. You implement precautions. You then follow up with contingency plans.

Although this was a technical mishap, it doesn't eliminate the necessity for the robots should something terrible occur.

Re:Guess what you missed.

[SomeKDEUser]

I understand that. Just that using the analogy of a goat herder hearing voices in his head is not a great analogy for good engineering practise. In fact bible analogies are usually never great about anything.

I am sure you could have come up with a thousand better analogies/moral tales made up on the spot.

Re:Guess what you missed.

[sjames]

I understand that. Just that using the analogy of a goat herder hearing voices in his head is not a great analogy for good engineering practise.

Of course not. Clearly it's a model of management practices.

Not that much of an investment

[el borak]

Â¥1 billion may sound like a lot, but it's only about $13M. Not exactly a major commitment.

Re:Unclear.

[Linsaran]

> The dangers associated with nuclear power are very much analogous to flying in an airplane vs. driving a car for a long trip

I don't think so. An airplane falling can actually improve avionics in the afterward years; radioactive contamination is hard to remove.

Your points about coal only make it certain using coal or nuclear energy are both bad options. Personally, I find geothermal energy better, if available.

Radioactive contamination is hard to remove, but again it affects a relatively small percentage of the earth. It affects that small percentage dramatically, but still a small percentage (and I would still argue a smaller percentage than oil and coal pollution does). Also accidents like that do actually help us to make better nuclear plants, for one, by analyzing how it failed we know where improvements should be made in the future.

And you yourself highlight the major problem with geothermal energy: availability. Actually that's the problem with most alternative energy sources, they've generally got insufficient availability to feed the needs of an industrialized nation.

Nuclear energy isn't perfect, there's certainly risks involved, but I think that all things considered they're acceptable risks, especially with some of the newer meltdown proof thorium molten salt designs. It's just that getting it out of the planning board and into use that is hard, too many people get terrified of any technology that has the word 'nuclear' in it.

Heading for high ground ...

[PPH]

... saying, "Kiss my shiny metal ass".

where were the robots?

[0WaitState]

Where were the robots? They were in the same place as the dosimeters, hazmat suits, geiger counters, breathing apparatus, standby generators, dual remote electrical hookups (Japan has two electrical standards), stocks of boron, reactor model upgrades, structure vents, and so on. In other words, nowhere. All preparation for emergencies was skipped. No doubt a couple decades of management bonuses were paid for keeping costs down.

This is why nuclear power is unsafe. Because you can't trust humans to run systems where a cost cut today doesn't blow up for 10-20 years. This kind of crap happens in all industries, it's just that in the nuclear industry the "oops" consequences are devastating.

Lots of Accidents

[raftpeople]

Maybe a tsunami is rare, but they still have Mothra and Godzilla over there, so it's probably worth it

Re:Brief reality check

[definate]

I don't know why you, and most atheists, would even concede that he existed in the first place?

I often here things like, "Yeah, Jesus existed, but he was probably just a cool guy, with a good philosophy".

Why even concede that when there's no records or references to him, beyond the bible (Which includes sources which may have the bible influencing them).

Re:Simple

[Neil Boekend]

I like my reality, yours is too boring. Mine has a decent chance of seing a space elevator this century, many more applications of robots and maybe some solution to FTL.

Re:Standard robots are not very good with radiatio

[XrayJunkie]

Processing units must be protected against the radiation. This is expensive (weight) and you dont build a robot that *might* be used in a radiation environment. So not quick adaptibility here. Extreme heat and cold could be more interesting - these robots could be used for fighting fires or solve problems with (advanced) cooling systems. But: For space, they try to use processing units with the ability to repair themselfes, rather than to use a radiation shields. They could be used for these robots, too.

Many accidents at nukes

[mdsolar]

You can only say that about a plant that was closed without ever having an accident. Maine Yankee, for example, had three accidents before it was closed because it was a major accident waiting to happen. Even Humboldt Bay, which barely operated at all because designers ignored seismic data, managed to lose nuclear fuel. Relying on defense-in-depth rather than intrinsically safe operations means the defenses do get used.

Re:Brief reality check

[Ihmhi]

Because I was going more for humor and less a statement of fact?

(My general rule is if there's no supporting sources outside of religious texts then it probably didn't happen.)

13 million dollars?

[Wyatt Earp]

Not much when non-rad hardened robots for EoD type work start at $60,000 and can go up to $275,000.

While Japan was caught naping, the US had robots for the job and sent some over.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9215346/U.S._to_send_radiation_hardened_robots_to_Japan

Re:13 million dollars?

[cusco]

EoD work? My End of Day robot should be able to bring me a cool drink and cook dinner after filling out my time sheet. Oh, you meant DoD? Never mind.

Re:13 million dollars?

[Wyatt Earp]

Yea, EOD work, stupid finger fail.

Re:Standard robots are not very good with radiatio

[Wyatt Earp]

Well, hate to tell you this, but there are currently digital cameras on Mars being exposed to much more radiation than whats present in Fukushima and they've been working for years.