Reactor robot fails to respond

The company that owns the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan has been forced to abandon a new robot inside one of the damaged reactor vessels.

BBC Link

So my question is whether they underestimated the level of radiation/robot shielding and that fried the robot. Proving they have no idea what has happened to that reactor core

a reply to: UltraMind

No robot will last long in that environment. Not one. Which I'm quite sure they know.

It's one reason that you use relay logic when you design reactor controls, instead of the latest Intel offering. Heck, even the insulation you spec has to take into account the radiation damage it'll accrue. Semiconductors don't stand a chance. You know what your likely run time is and plan the task around that.

Time to bust out the steampunk powered robots. All gears and attached to a very long tether.

originally posted by: dreamfox1
Time to bust out the steampunk powered robots. All gears and attached to a very long tether.

That is what may have to happen.
Seems like too little way too late though.
Pour some more seawater on it... that'll fix it.

a reply to: Bedlam

Sorry for my muddy thinking. I realised they must have had a rad detector on the robot (surely?) and been able to predict its likely degradation rate. My original post was based on them guessing the rads in the core and then the robot failing significantly faster than their predictions, thereby indicating its a lot worse than the numbers they see externally are telling them.

originally posted by: UltraMind
a reply to: Bedlam
Sorry for my muddy thinking. I realised they must have had a rad detector on the robot (surely?) and been able to predict its likely degradation rate...

If they had a rad detector on the robot, they'd immediately know what the rate was and wouldn't need external numbers, eh?

It's not a cut and dried sort of thing. The life expectancy is an average. It depends on what gets popped.

Perhaps the cable got stuck on something or was not long enough and got unplugged?

So WHO is going to go in and fix/retrieve the robot?

One thing is common in all these nuclear disasters, Chernobyl and Japan, is the amount of brave people who give up their health and long lives to do something. That is the most memorable thing about them.

originally posted by: bullcat
One thing is common in all these nuclear disasters, Chernobyl and Japan, is the amount of brave people who give up their health and long lives to do something. That is the most memorable thing about them.

This, and I take my hat off to them for doing so. Its pretty sad it comes to that though...

a reply to: UltraMind

As I understand it they knew that the robot would not last in there, they just didn't know how long it would last, because these kinds of tests have never been done before - or at least not declassified, I'm sure the US has done a million and one tests on all kinds of radiological possibilities.

It shouldn't surprise anyone really. This is now probably the most inhospitable environment currently on Earth. There's a lot we don't know, because the only other opportunity was Chernobyl, and when that happened there was no opportunity or intention to study or check anything. It happened and there was an instant push to cover it up, bury it, deal with it in secret and then eventually abandon the place once things were just about under control and sealed within it.

At least with Fukushima we have more opportunity to investigate, study and learn new things. I hope that's what we do for as long as this continues. Sure, it's bad that this has happened and it's terrible that it's still not under control as it should be, but at the very least we should be learning as much as we can from this while efforts continue to bring everything under control.

In ten years that site will probably have a massive concrete shielding over it, like the one they're building at Chernobyl right now. I hope that if that is the case we continue to make it a place of scientific learning wherever possible. Someone needs to be working on a plan to make it a viable scientific site once it's under control and made safe, hopefully this little robot is the start of that.

originally posted by: bullcat
One thing is common in all these nuclear disasters, Chernobyl and Japan, is the amount of brave people who give up their health and long lives to do something. That is the most memorable thing about them.

Absolutely this.
The thing that really angers me about Chernobyl is that no one knows just how many people died there. While there are 41 people on the official list, it's likely that the USSR covered up much more than they shared.

How many people around the world today even know what Chernobyl is, let alone anything about the people who sacrificed their lives to try and prevent a bigger catastrophe? Without their selfless actions, millions of people would have died.