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Transforming Robot Gets Stuck In Fukushima Nuclear Reactor

Posted by samzenpus on from the bend-me-shape-me dept.

An anonymous reader writes with more bad news for the people still dealing with the Fukushima nuclear accident. "The ability to change shape hasn't saved a robot probe from getting stuck inside a crippled Japanese nuclear reactor. Tokyo Electric Power will likely leave the probe inside the reactor housing at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex north of Tokyo after it stopped moving. On Friday, the utility sent a robot for the first time into the primary containment vessel (PCV) of reactor No. 1 at the plant, which was heavily damaged by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in northern Japan. 'The robot got stuck at a point two-thirds of its way inside the PCV and we are investigating the cause,' a Tokyo Electric spokesman said via email. The machine became stuck on Friday after traveling to 14 of 18 planned checkpoints."

4 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Please, Don't tell Michael Bay by gstoddart · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Love it, hate it .. but, honestly you simply can't discount a film franchise in which two of the four movies have had global revenues of over a billion dollars and shows up on the lists of highest grossing films.

    At the end of the day, screw artistic merit when you earn zillions of dollars.

    You don't have to like it, but there's not escaping that they've been successful. As long as those movies make that much money, you can count on more of them.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  2. Confidence, that's the ticket by Catbeller · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Don't worry, a billion self-driven cars will never make an error. We've thought of everything. Because that's how engineering works. No errors, all the time. Unless it's turning a corner or something--

    1. Re:Confidence, that's the ticket by itzly · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Self driving cars only need to make less errors than smartphone-distracted humans. That's not a very high standard.

  3. Re:Please, Don't tell Michael Bay by tlhIngan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Love it, hate it .. but, honestly you simply can't discount a film franchise in which two of the four movies have had global revenues of over a billion dollars and shows up on the lists of highest grossing films.

    At the end of the day, screw artistic merit when you earn zillions of dollars.

    You don't have to like it, but there's not escaping that they've been successful. As long as those movies make that much money, you can count on more of them.

    The technical term is "Asses in seats". Hollywood knows summer blockbusters are basically plotless action flicks that really have little artistic merit, but damn do they get those asses into those seats.

    And it's just fine. Every other creative medium has similar things going for it - books can be pulp or they can be literature, or span the wide gap between them. Movies can be thought-provoking, life altering with tons of subtext, or they can consist of people just blowing crap up. You see this in video games too - from your standard FPS shooter that sells and makes billions to your indie game exposing some human condition.

    Just because Depression Quest is a thought-provoking video game doesn't mean you can't have your Call of Duty.

    Ironically, though, Michael Bay isn't a bad a filmmaker as you think. He actually does do quite a few things right that other filmmakers do wrong.