Robots Compete In Navigating Simulation Of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi Plant

schwit1 writes: A new DARPA Robotics Challenge completed its final competition recently. 25 teams operated robots around a landscape designed to simulate the hazardous environment that aid workers found after the Fukushima Daiichi reactor in Japan melted down multiple times in 2011. Engineers tried to help, but disaster ensued, rendering a huge area around the plant uninhabitable after toxic steam was released into the skies. The radioactive leftovers are still emitting a million watts of heat. First prize is $2m, second prize is $1m, and third gets $500,000.

Comments

A million watts zig heat in Dec 2013

[trout007]

It went from 169 MW to 1 MW in 30 months. We are about 18 months past Dec 2013 so if the reduction is about the same we have approximately 10 kW of heat.

Re:A million watts zig heat in Dec 2013

[khallow]

The decay curve is not exponential. A live reactor has a mix of a large variety of isotopes with a wide range of decay rates. Some isotopes have a half life of seconds or minutes and some have a half life of 4.5 billion years.

As I understand it, most of the current day heat is from isotopes that have half lives of a few decades. So the rate of decline should have slowed down a lot.

A reactor can only melt down once.

[Irate Engineer]

after the Fukushima Daiichi reactor in Japan melted down multiple times

Umm...no. Fukushima Daiichi was a station that had multiple reactors (six). Reactor units 1-3 suffered individual meltdowns, and unit 4 suffered a fire due to cooling water loss in the storage pond. Units 5 and 6 were damaged but were already in cold shutdown when the tsunami occurred.

Re:A reactor can only melt down once.

[MrL0G1C]

Besides, "the radioactive leftovers" makes it sound like the reactors vomited their contents all around them like in Chernobyl, which was not the case.

Wrong.

Both suffered reactor meltdown, both suffered 'explosive loss'
Comparison of Fukushima and Chernobyl nuclear accidents

Fukushima got lucky, the wind was blowing out to sea and 80% of the radiation due to the explosions went out to sea.

Tepco lied continually, it took years for real facts to come out.

Re:A reactor can only melt down once.

[drinkypoo]

Tepco lied continually, it took years for real facts to come out.

The way you say this, I feel, is a bit mild. A more accurate thing to say was that Everything Tepco Said Was A Lie. They lied about radiation exposure and release every single time they said anything. They did not make one single statement in good faith. They did not operate the plant in good faith. All the Tepco execs should be up against the wall.

Re:Or we could just deal with the problem cheaply

[Tetch]

Send the most worthless and despicable members of society into deal with the problem

Politicians, lawyers, CEOs, Priests, Psychiatrists, priests, and the like

Excellent idea, no need to waste finely-engineered, highly valuable hi-tec robots - but your list forgot to include marketing morons, advertising "creatives", financial trader types, property speculators, environmental polluters, all other kinds of greedy, self-centered, planet-wrecking ignoramuses, and of course telephone sanitizers ......

Watch out when we invent artificial intelligence

[jfdavis668]

You know things like cleaning up nuclear power plants is the first thing we will use it for. No wonder robots rebel in science fiction movies.

Re:Or we could just deal with the problem cheaply

[Tetch]

telephone sanitizers

Those produce something useful.

Sorry - you are of course, quite right. I have indeed enjoyed having my telephone sanitized, by a specialist with the proper tools, on numerous occasions.

But their inclusion on the list was obligatory really - it's a B-Ark thing :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

You can't send electronics into that environment

[Karmashock]

Any system is going to have to be pneumatic and fiber optic in nature. Electronics fail in high radiation environments.

Every robot we've sent in there breaks in minutes if not seconds.

If your motors are all pneumatic actuators like what you see with big dog, then they won't fail when subjected to that kind of radiation.

Your only issue will be getting information from the robot to your command station so you can see what is going on. And the solution there is to use fiber optics. The fiber optics will transmit light into the reactor from the robot and other fiber optics will put up the reflected light to be processed by the command station.

Possibly SOME electronics that are VERY simple will work in a high radiation environment. But nothing complicated has survived. The whole push to miniaturize stuff is counter productive when dealing with radiation.