via AnonHQ.com / March 14, 2016 / Radiation in Fukushima was so bad, they couldn’t afford to send people into some places. It turns out, the radiation was so high that even the chrome-domed replacements didn’t fare much better. “It is extremely difficult to access the inside of the nuclear plant,” Naohiro Masuda, TEPCO’s head of decommissioning said. “The biggest obstacle is the radiation.” The solution? Robots. The problem? Robots. “It takes … Continue reading →
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via Science Alert / January 19, 2016 / It’s been almost five years since the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011, but the scale of the emergency means Japan is still at the relative beginning of efforts to clean up and contain the radioactive site. So this week Toshiba unveiled (above) a remote-control robot that’s expected to remove fuel-rod assemblies from the spent fuel pool … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Gizmodo.com / June 30, 2015 / When the 2011 earthquake in Japan damaged the Fukushima nuclear power plant, teams scrambled to find a robot that could go where humans couldn’t. In many ways those robots failed, and ever since, there has been a focus on creating robots that can get the job done. Enter Toshiba’s “Scorpion” robot, which will make its way inside the power plant this August. The … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia asiaone.com / May 5th, 2015 / A new small robot will be used to inspect the condition of melted nuclear fuel at the second reactor of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant as early as this summer, marking the first full-scale probe since the disaster caused by the massive earthquake and ensuing tsunami in 2011. The use of the robot, which is now being developed, will mark the … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Gizmodo.com / April 22, 2015 / The dangerous and unenviable task of cleaning up the Fukushima reactor has hit its latest snag: Two snake-like reconnaissance bots had to be abandoned inside the reactor—after one got stuck and another’s camera was damaged by radiation. The Fukushima cleanup relies almost entirely on robots because radiation levels inside the reactor are still too dangerous for humans. TEPCO, the company managing the efforts, … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Japan Times / April 11, 2015 / A remote-controlled robot inserted to survey the inside of the No. 1 reactor at the damaged Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has stopped functioning, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said. As a first step in the utility’s effort to remove melted nuclear fuel from the bottom of the unit’s primary containment vessel, the shape-shifting robot was sent in Friday morning to find … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia phys.org / March 20, 2015 / Researchers in Japan have jointly developed a robot with four arms and four crawlers which can perform multiple tasks simultaneously to help clean up the rubble left after the 2011 quake-tsunami disasters in Minamisoma, Fukushima. On March 13th, a remote controlled four-armed, four-wheeled crawler robot designed to clear rubble and save lives in areas with complex terrain was unveiled at the Kikuchi plant … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia ubergizmo.com / January 18, 2014 / Robots are wonderful workers for a few reasons – they do not get tired, they do not complain and neither will they congregate around a water cooler to gossip about their superior and his or her flaws. Not only that, robots do not have a union, and will be unable to go on strike – not to mention in a more practical manner, … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia world-nuclear-news.org / January 13, 2015 / Work began on the Naraha Remote Technology Development Centre, which is being built by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), in September 2014. The centre at Nahara-Minami industrial park is due to begin full operations in the 2016 fiscal year. The complex will house a mock-up of the lower part of a reactor containment vessel, representing the interior of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Enformable.com / March 27, 2014 / Tokyo Electric announced today that the “Warrior” robot, designed and engineered in the United States, tipped over during an inspection of the Unit 2 reactor building two weeks ago and could not be retrieved due a dead battery. On March 13th, the “Warrior” robot was one of several robots collecting samples of the concrete floor on the fifth floor of the reactor building … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Japan Times / March 20, 2014 / Hitachi Ltd. and Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy Ltd. say they have developed robots to detect cooling water leakage points and the condition of nuclear fuel at the disaster-struck Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant. One robot can move through narrow pipes by changing shape and another can move through radioactive water to perform research related to the task of removing melted nuclear fuel. The … Continue reading →
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