Japanese Robots Await Call To Action 50
Kyusaku Natsume writes with this excerpt from a Kyodo News report on the robots Japan has available on standby to work at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi plant:
"Japanese robots designed for heavy lifting and data collection have been prepared for deployment at irradiated reactor buildings of the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power station, where US-made robots have already taken radiation and temperature readings as well as visual images at the crippled facility via remote control. ... Enryu (rescue dragon) was developed in the aftermath of the magnitude-7.3 Great Hanshin Earthquake that hit the Kobe area in 1995. Designed to engage in rescue work, the remote-controlled robot has two arms that can lift objects up to 100 kg. It has 'undergone training' at the Kitakyushu municipal fire department in Fukuoka Prefecture."
No you idiot, wrong genere (Score:2)
I want my Gundam [wikimedia.org]...
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Why now? (Score:2)
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It seems to have come across just fine, if you knew to ask that question....
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As for why they are hesitant to send in the bots, I suspect once they are used to clean up Fukushima, the bots themselves are considered nuclear waste, no?
What took so long? (Score:2)
Re:What took so long? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What took so long? (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, they could find the same troubles than the guys at Sandia labs trying to fix a stuck source of radiation with a M2 robot:
http://www.physorg.com/news9093.html [physorg.com]
Having random plastic parts of your robot melting because they are not good to use inside a gamma ray oven is really bad. That electronics need radiation shielding is a know problem, but the performance of the rest of the pieces of equipment is something that they would know until they test it in the field or in a radiation test chamber.
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Robots die from radiation faster than humans do.
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The reason it took so long was that they weren't prepared. All the things they had to think through to use a robot in these circumstances - nobody had thought about it! All the logistics, all the money, permits, etc. weren't even halfway ready. Amazing, isn't it? That's how an industry in the hands of the Titanic syndrome looks like.
There isn't any research in how to react to such an "eventuality", because the industry doesn't want to know. It is just not supposed to happen.
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Re:What took so long? (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazing, isn't it?
Only to someone who doesn't have a clue what's going on. Every time we get one of these superficial stories that talks about some minor goof up in the Fukushima recovery/clean up, we get drama from the armchair engineers who remain eager to second guess things. My suspicion is that these guys have been showered with offers of robotic support from all over the world. They'll just have to test this stuff and see what works and what doesn't.
The thing is, the accident is over. Perhaps it will amount to something significant, but that hasn't happened yet. What they're doing now is radioactivity containment and repair of the systems for cooling the cores.
There isn't any research in how to react to such an "eventuality", because the industry doesn't want to know. It is just not supposed to happen.
This is the research. Learn by doing. People seem to ignore that there has been perhaps three other accidents comparable to Fukushima in the history of civilian power generation (as opposed to experimental reactors and military power). None of those accidents have much in common with Fukushima (all three were heavy on human operator error and light on magnitude 9 earthquakes).
And when you have accidents that rare, what do you do? Make your own accidents? That's what they did with Chernobyl, after all.
That's how an industry in the hands of the Titanic syndrome looks like.
And clueless person bases their perception of "an industry" on a crap movie? Say it ain't so!
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Surely you know that the Titanic was a real ship, it had design flaws, it was operated in an unsafe manner, it sank, killed lots passengers due to a lack of life boats? And that none of this is James Cameron's fault? No?
So what? We figured out why it sank and why so many people died. Nobody in the developed world does it that way any more. Among other things, that's a key missing lesson for anyone who uses the phrase "Titanic syndrome." Namely, that for the real life Titanic, we learned from the accident and used that knowledge to save lives.
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Please confirm: you are saying nothing happened?
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you are saying nothing happened?
I'd say that's fairly accurate - nothing compared to the hype and panic at least. No one died from radiation sickness. There was a single worker who died after being hit by a crane, but that's an industrial accident and it's not correlated with the nuclear nature of the plant; if you hit a gas-powered plant, hydroelectric dam or huge wind farm with a 9.0 earthquake + tsunami and you can also expect casualties. As it turns out, it was much safer to be inside the nuclear plant than on the beach when the tsuna
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Please confirm: you are saying nothing happened?
I said nothing significant happened.Obviously, that is an opinion, but Stellian, who also replied to your article, lays out the argument [slashdot.org]. The accident hasn't caused a significant number of casualties, the radioactive contamination hasn't been released in a particularly dangerous form or dispersed very far. And at worst, it's an INES 6 event, which hasn't killed anyone through radioactive poisoning, masquerading politically as an INES 7 event.
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A formidable one, in my view. What would have to happen before you consider it significant? Tokyo deserted? Or can it be a little less?
What you and stellian do is handpick the best spin you can find and even downplay that. It is actually amazing to watch, but does not really improve any confidence in the technology.
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And when you have accidents that rare, what do you do? Make your own accidents? That's what they did with Chernobyl, after all.
They made an accident? I think we can lay the blame for Chernobyl at the feet of the USA. As well as ABSOLUTELY ALL of the world's problems.
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Nothing good is rubbing off on you from the Internet and you're not making a positive contribution to it.
And yet nothing good has come from your post. You didn't explain in what way the OP was wrong. You didn't offer an alternate theory. You just said for him/her to go away.
The exchange of ideas is the second best thing about the internet. The OP was doing just that. It doesn't have to be an idea that you agree with, because that gives you the opportunity to examine the flaws and raise other ideas for further discussion. It might even make you think.
You should try it some time.
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So like many governments around the world the government of Japan found investing in infrastructure "too expensive."
So we'll tap your ample bank account the next time Japan needs to upgrade its nuclear plants? Where do you think the money will come from? There's way too many economically ignorant people who think Other Peoples' Money is free and that all we need to do to fix something is spend more OPM on it.
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The problem with your notion is that there are people getting rich running these companies poorly, and other people making money off their running them poorly (investors.) And neither the people running the companies poorly nor the investors tend to bear the responsibility for what is done with the investors' money.
Here in my part of the world Pacific Bell squandered money earmarked for infrastructure without actually improving it more than was absolutely necessary to provide government mandated minimum ser
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Here in my part of the world Pacific Bell squandered money earmarked for infrastructure without actually improving it more than was absolutely necessary to provide government mandated minimum service limits
For our information, he's talking about California (which contains the complete service area [nfwf.org] of PG&E), which is working hard to become yet another third world shithole. So why are you complaining when Pacific Bell does what it is paid to do? Don't put those incentives in place and Pac Bell won't do them. Common sense really.
Meanwhile PG&E has done the same and not long ago we had a gas main explode in an area which PG&E had marked for further monitoring and service, and then done neither monitoring nor service.
I'm so surprised when a business doesn't do stuff that's not in its interests to do. In a place like California, monitoring and service increases your liability in case of accident.
You know it's bad when... (Score:2, Flamebait)
who woul have thought... (Score:2)
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Grapples and trucks (Score:1)
Actually, there are huge remote controlled grapples and trucks on site and they have been there for weeks already, carting away debris. The problem is that they don't look like robots. They look just like grapples and trucks carting away debris...
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Let's hope the robot is hardened... (Score:1)
Let's hope the robot is hardened against ionizing radiation. Otherwise instead of "Hasta la vista, baby" it's more like "Dave, my mind is going..."
$5 says (Score:2)
Japanese robots for Fukushima (Score:1)
It is indicative of the gravity of the situation that the Japanese have not accepted any of the offers of radiation hardened robots designed for nuclear incidents such as this.
The most logical explanation is that the situation is known to be impossible, so why accept foreign robots and the obligations that go with them just to be further embarrassed.
No work can be done in the facility until the radioactive lake in the plant, currently about 1300x80x20 ft is drained, which will not be until year end at best.
Tetsuwan Atom on standby (Score:2)
just in case......
This is how the Robot Rebellion starts (Score:2)