Toshiba Prepares Amphibious Robot for Fukushima Reactor Pool
20. 1. 2016 | IEEE Spectrum | spectrum.ieee.org
There’s still a huge amount of radioactive waste cleanup to do at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. Some of that cleanup can be done by careful humans.
And there’s some that’s too dangerous for humans, but not quite dangerous enough to dissuade robots. Clearing the fuel rods out of the pool in reactor 3 is one of those tasks, and Toshiba has built a robot to tackle it. The radiation inside the reactor 3 building isn’t as bad as inside reactor 1, but it’s still enough to prevent humans from working there long term.
This is a problem, because there are a bunch of spent fuel rods in the reactor 3 swimming pool that really should be somewhere else, so Toshiba has come up with this hulking amphibious robot to perform the job remotely. The robot has a bunch of monocular displays, along with that bulky pendant-thing with a couple 2-axes joysticks and some toggle switches for changing joint controls.
Read more at IEEE Spectrum
Image Credit: Kyodo News
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