Bad news for bots: Fukushima cleanup robots overpowered by radiation (VIDEOS)

[cdev]

This is kind of interesting, wonder what is happening here?

"The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is still so toxic that even the robots tasked with cleaning up the site after three catastrophic meltdowns are struggling to ‘survive’. "


Five years after a massive earthquake and 10ft-high tsunami laid waste to the energy plant in eastern Japan, the major operation to rid the area of nuclear debris continues.
An estimated $21 billion has been spent on cleanup efforts since 2011, including funding for a team of remote activated robots capable of going to high-dose radiation areas of the plant where humans cannot enter and survive.
However, it has now emerged that at least five of these robots have been lost to the dangers that lurk in Fukushima Daiichi’s severely damaged nuclear reactors and waste treatment buildings.
https://www.rt.com/viral/335354-fukushima-robots-radiation-death/

("datasheet" ? on the "Rosemary" robot? or map of the robots tasks in the plant- its in Japanese )

http://www.tepco.co.jp/decommision/principles/technology/robot/robot_upper/pdf/rosemary01.pdf )

also

https://www.rt.com/news/335199-fukushima-five-years-cleanup/
 

[VK3DRB]

Sounds like a load of  .

TEPCO is an unreliable source of anything except isotopes of plutonium, strontium, caesium, iodine and tellurium. Don't trust anything from Russia Today either. It is Russian media, so there won't be much truth in it whilst Putin is in the driving seat.

[Towger]

The Russians have their own collection of rad hardened robots, which failed to operate once they helicoptered them onto the roof of the Chernobyl reactor.

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/10861/title/Soviet-Official-Admits-That-Robots-Couldn-t-Handle-Chernobyl-Cleanup/

[hayatepilot]

It doesn't seem that unreasonable to me that that the chips in the robots can get destroyes by high energy radiation.
"Overpowered" is a incredibly dumbed down explanation.

Chips do fail under high doses of ionizing radiation rather quickly.

[Ian.M]

What do you expect if you send a robot for a swim in a pool with high activity spent fuel rods?  Even rad-hard processors and heavy hermetically sealed shielding only go so far.   One *can* design a robot that can survive and do useful work in a reactor core, but its probably a lot cheaper and quicker to accept the loss rate and simply treat the robots as disposable items.

Presumably someone's done the cost-benefit analysis on loosing robots built using conventional off-the-shelf technology vs designing and building a robot with a heavily shielded mobile rad-hard brainbox linked to a remote chassis carrying its arms and manipulators by a long enough umbilical to let the brainbox stay out of the highest radiation areas, and with the remote chassis extremely rad-hardened i.e. no critical systems using silicon based electronics.

[ericloewe]

This really isn't news. One of the first concerns when the whole thing started was to acquire radiation-hardened robots. Little development (compared to other fields) had happened, so there was talk of a protracted development process being required for what they really needed.

Early attempts used off-the-shelf robots with added shielding, IIRC. Given TEPCO's general incompetence, I'd expect little to have changed, especially when faced with the prospect of forking out more cash in an already massively expensive operation.

[elgonzo]

It is not like the the loss of those robots is really surprising. That critical electronic components of the robots working inside the reactor buildings will eventually succumb to the high radiation is expected. Radiation hardening and shielding certainly is used to reduce exposure to radioactivity and effects caused by it. But one can only spend so much weight on shielding before effectively immobilizing the robot. It's not like TEPCO becoming competent suddenly makes it possible to build robots which are being immune to high radiation. It might be that the initial expectations of how long the  robots will remain operational were somewhat over-optimistic, but this would really not be a drama like the media (surprise,surprise) are trying to sell here.

[amyk]

Vacuum tubes might be better than transistors, but I guess they might have trouble at ultra-high doses too (some tubes had radioisotope coatings to enhance the ionisation.)

What about relays? Pneumatics/hydraulics would probably be immune...

[elgonzo]

What about relays? Pneumatics/hydraulics would probably be immune...

Think again...
Hmm, pneumatic/hydraulic remote control? High temperatures, yada, yada...
Pneumatic/Hydraulic video feeds (or other sensor feeds to enable the operator to actually remote control the robot)?

[elgonzo]

What do you expect if you send a robot for a swim in a pool with high activity spent fuel rods?  Even rad-card processors and heavy hermetically sealed shielding only go so far.   One *can* design a robot that can survive and do useful work in a reactor core, but its probably a lot cheaper and quicker to accept the loss rate and simply treat the robots as disposable items.

Presumably someone's done the cost-benefit analysis on loosing robots built using conventional off-the-shelf technology vs designing and building a robot with a heavily shielded mobile rad-hard brainbox linked to a remote chassis carrying its arms and manipulators by a long enough umbilical to let the brainbox stay out of the highest radiation areas, and with the remote chassis extremely rad-hardened i.e. no critical systems using silicon based electronics.

The operator of the remote controlled robot depends on certain sensor feeds to do meaningful work with the robot. Whether it is some kind of video feed, or other sensor feed (ultrasonic, etc...), in the end you probably have to incorporate one or another form of circuity in the robot. If the sensor system goes blind, the robot effectively becomes useless, even if the "brain box", the mechanics of the robot and the remote control are still functional. If you have another robot in the vicinity, its sensor system can be used by the operator operate the first, blind robot. But the sensors of the 2nd robot will in a probably also succumb to radiation effects after some time...

The robots are certainly disposable items. When they are sent into the reactors, they become radioactive waste and will be discarded even if they survive their mission. Nobody wants them back

[Ian.M]

You can do stuff like put the camera in a rad-shielded enclosure and use an imaging fibeoptic bundle to bring the light from the focal plane of the lens to the image sensor, but increasing its endurance will carry a massive weight penalty and a significant image quality penalty.

The other issue, as you have touched on, is what do you do with a heavily contaminated robot that needs sensors and control systems outside of it fully rad-hardened brainbox replaced?  Its probably too hot for humans to work on, so unless its been designed for another robot to be able to swap pluggable modules, and has good enough onboard diagnostics to be able to identify what's failed, repair will be impossible.   Writing it off, dumping it in a steel drum and pouring in concrete, and starting up a new factory fresh replacement is the sane thing to do.

[HAL-42b]

I thought they were on the right track when they were lowering the robots from cranes. Actually the whole crane was a robot but only the end effector was lowered in high radiation environment.

Edit: It seems like the failing robot is only a tiny camera probe which was not very highly shielded. The thing is designed to crawl in tight spaces and seems disposable enough.

[VK3DRB]

The Russians have their own collection of rad hardened robots...

And their own collection of terrorists who shot down MH17, under full protection of a radiation hardened android called Vladimir Putin.

[elgonzo]

The Russians have their own collection of rad hardened robots...

And their own collection of terrorists who shot down MH17, under full protection of a radiation hardened android called Vladimir Putin.

You seem to be really enamoured of bare chested men. 

[ericloewe]

The Russians have their own collection of rad hardened robots...

And their own collection of terrorists who shot down MH17, under full protection of a radiation hardened android called Vladimir Putin.

The appropriate term is "Little Green Men".

[station240]

You can do stuff like put the camera in a rad-shielded enclosure and use an imaging fibeoptic bundle to bring the light from the focal plane of the lens to the image sensor, but increasing its endurance will carry a massive weight penalty and a significant image quality penalty.

The other issue, as you have touched on, is what do you do with a heavily contaminated robot that needs sensors and control systems outside of it fully rad-hardened brainbox replaced?  Its probably too hot for humans to work on, so unless its been designed for another robot to be able to swap pluggable modules, and has good enough onboard diagnostics to be able to identify what's failed, repair will be impossible.   Writing it off, dumping it in a steel drum and pouring in concrete, and starting up a new factory fresh replacement is the sane thing to do.

Problem is retrieving the dead bot so it can be disposed of, some of them have broken down in awkward areas (like stairs). Not only is there limited space to manuvre, but as yet there is no robot up to the task of moving them.

Edit: It seems like the failing robot is only a tiny camera probe which was not very highly shielded. The thing is designed to crawl in tight spaces and seems disposable enough.

Oh I remember when they announced they were using that probe, I didn't think it was going to last long. Having seen the photos I wonder how they ever expected it to last any period of time.
It's just terrible, they could have squashed all the electronics into a few blocks, and added some shielded cables/fibre optics for anything outside that area. If each block has it's own batteries, they can talk to each other with fibre.

[HAL-42b]

My understanding is that the probe was not intended to be rad-hard at all. It's purpose seems to be to crawl in low radiation nooks and crannies to map and document the access. Once it encounters high radiation it stops and is left in place.

If my theory is correct the failure of the probe is a complete non-news blown out of proportion by RT.

For the record I am not entirely against RT as a propaganda outlet. It is useful for counteracting US propaganda outlets such as Fox and CNN. They are completely dependable when it comes to airing America's dirty laundry and since they are a propaganda outlet they can not lie the entire time because they need to maintain credibility. 

[elgonzo]

Problem is retrieving the dead bot so it can be disposed of, some of them have broken down in awkward areas (like stairs). Not only is there limited space to manuvre, but as yet there is no robot up to the task of moving them.

Mostly no problem, really. You don't just retrieve the bot and leave all the other radioactive rubble lying around, right? You dispose it together with the other radioactive remains of the reactor structure, whenever this will be. Until then, the retired bot can chill and enjoy the "sunshine"...

However, a dead robot could pose a problem when blocking an access way for other robots and thus becoming an obstacle. Which would require a robot with some guns to push it out of the way...

[T3sl4co1l]

Vacuum tubes might be better than transistors, but I guess they might have trouble at ultra-high doses too (some tubes had radioisotope coatings to enhance the ionisation.)

What about relays? Pneumatics/hydraulics would probably be immune...

Hard vacuum devices are pretty good (the main result of radiation is increased photoemission -- off-state leakage), but they don't handle much power relative to their size and power consumption.  Anything motive would require thyratrons, which are gas discharge devices: under sufficient flux, they'll turn on sporadically when they're supposed to stay off, or simply never turn off.

Tim