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How fascinating that they might need to develop new tools for the unique circumstances. Does anyone know if they would keep the design proprietary and e.g. mine

How fascinating that they might need to develop new tools for the unique circumstances. Does anyone know if they would keep the design proprietary and e.g. mine it for profits, or are they under any requirement for open-design, open process? It strikes me that in what can be described as a "disaster" from many angles, they are potentially modeling a working containment-and-recovery process from other angles. This could be extremely valuable, the exception to the safety tradition that writes new rules providing higher leverage in working with beneficial and yet hazardous materials.

Animats 8y ago
Custome tools are not unusual in nuclear cleanup. The Three Mile Island job required many very job-specific tools. This thing is a gripper at the end of a cable, built for the specific space into which it has to fit. The most it can do is take samples. Fuel removal is a long way off. It's discouraging that it took eight years to reach this point.
Ultramanoid 8y ago
Tepco is not exactly famous for its competence. I understand the IAEA is involved at some level, though. I'd expect the latter to leverage any tech breakthroughs in this decades-long process and apply this knowledge to any incidents in the future, much as the air travel industry does, learning from every crash.
joe_the_user 8y ago
It's been quite a few years and this is the first time they've made to reactor. My guess is this success is not so much a matter of finally creating a clever design as it is the radiation has finally gotten down to a manageable level. I know they tried earlier with quite a variety of robots, all of which were rendered useless by the radiation levels (sensors and circuits becoming too unpredictable).
- geomark 8y ago
  What are the radiation levels the failed robots experienced? Searching, I keep finding information about radiation levels in reference to human health. But I'm interested in the total dose those robots get before they fail. I used to work on space electronics that had to survive mega-rad levels of total dose radiation. How quickly do electronics accumulate those levels inside Fukushima?
  - pvaldes 8y ago
    Maybe I sound naive, but why do we need to move electronics there?. Why they don't just use a disposable lead tube ending in the minimum working telescopic lens (mechanical) system possible and a cable moving electrons inside to build an image in a computer at km of distance. The brain of the robot should be out of the building, not inside. Couldn't we estimate radiation by how long some well known matherial is surviving before to crash instead to use a sensor?.
    - pjc50 8y ago
      Ah, the HN "why don't they just"... A good overview: https://www.wired.com/story/fukushima-robot-cleanup/ https://www.wired.com/story/fukushima-robot-cleanup/ containing the excellent phrase "Until we send the bot in, we don’t know what the conditions are. And after it’s sent, we can’t change it". https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/robots-fukushima-nuclear-disaster-dying-probe-clean-up-tepco-toshiba-reactor-nuclear-radiation-a7612396.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/robots-fukushima-nu... : "The latest attempt to harvest data on Fukushima failed after a robot designed by Toshiba to withstand high radiation levels died five times faster than expected. The robot was supposed to be able to cope with 73 sieverts of radiation, but the radiation level inside the reactor was recently recorded at 530 sieverts per hour."
      - jandrese 8y ago
        If anybody is curious how much radiation a sievert is, there is a handy chart for reference: https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/ 530 sieverts/hour would mean a person exposed for less than a minute would be a dead man walking. Even a 30 second exposure would be difficult to recover from. Electronics would suffer from constant bit flips. You would really need to keep most or all of the electronics back in a shielded box at the end of a long cable and make the robot as dumb as possible. This sadly only goes so far since you do need sensors that are made out of electronics on the robot. Cameras for example. It's a complicated system, and worse you need this robot to be quite capable if it's going to deal with uneven terrain and eventually breaking up and removing the melted fuel.

Animats 8y ago

Custome tools are not unusual in nuclear cleanup. The Three Mile Island job required many very job-specific tools. This thing is a gripper at the end of a cable, built for the specific space into which it has to fit. The most it can do is take samples. Fuel removal is a long way off. It's discouraging that it took eight years to reach this point.

Ultramanoid 8y ago

Tepco is not exactly famous for its competence. I understand the IAEA is involved at some level, though. I'd expect the latter to leverage any tech breakthroughs in this decades-long process and apply this knowledge to any incidents in the future, much as the air travel industry does, learning from every crash.

joe_the_user 8y ago

It's been quite a few years and this is the first time they've made to reactor. My guess is this success is not so much a matter of finally creating a clever design as it is the radiation has finally gotten down to a manageable level. I know they tried earlier with quite a variety of robots, all of which were rendered useless by the radiation levels (sensors and circuits becoming too unpredictable).

geomark 8y ago
What are the radiation levels the failed robots experienced? Searching, I keep finding information about radiation levels in reference to human health. But I'm interested in the total dose those robots get before they fail. I used to work on space electronics that had to survive mega-rad levels of total dose radiation. How quickly do electronics accumulate those levels inside Fukushima?
- pvaldes 8y ago
  Maybe I sound naive, but why do we need to move electronics there?. Why they don't just use a disposable lead tube ending in the minimum working telescopic lens (mechanical) system possible and a cable moving electrons inside to build an image in a computer at km of distance. The brain of the robot should be out of the building, not inside. Couldn't we estimate radiation by how long some well known matherial is surviving before to crash instead to use a sensor?.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    Ah, the HN "why don't they just"... A good overview: https://www.wired.com/story/fukushima-robot-cleanup/ https://www.wired.com/story/fukushima-robot-cleanup/ containing the excellent phrase "Until we send the bot in, we don’t know what the conditions are. And after it’s sent, we can’t change it". https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/robots-fukushima-nuclear-disaster-dying-probe-clean-up-tepco-toshiba-reactor-nuclear-radiation-a7612396.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/robots-fukushima-nu... : "The latest attempt to harvest data on Fukushima failed after a robot designed by Toshiba to withstand high radiation levels died five times faster than expected. The robot was supposed to be able to cope with 73 sieverts of radiation, but the radiation level inside the reactor was recently recorded at 530 sieverts per hour."
    - jandrese 8y ago
      If anybody is curious how much radiation a sievert is, there is a handy chart for reference: https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/ 530 sieverts/hour would mean a person exposed for less than a minute would be a dead man walking. Even a 30 second exposure would be difficult to recover from. Electronics would suffer from constant bit flips. You would really need to keep most or all of the electronics back in a shielded box at the end of a long cable and make the robot as dumb as possible. This sadly only goes so far since you do need sensors that are made out of electronics on the robot. Cameras for example. It's a complicated system, and worse you need this robot to be quite capable if it's going to deal with uneven terrain and eventually breaking up and removing the melted fuel.