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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."
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.
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?
Some of them were playing violin, while rest enjoyed walking up and down the stairs.
839*929
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.
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?
Noah was probably a dude on a raft with a couple of goats, and some writer seriously blew that shit out of proportion.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
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.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
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).
Have gnu, will travel.
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.
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.
Remain calm! All is well!