Robot 'race' to fix damaged Fukushima nuclear plant

Japanese company Mitsubishi has unveiled a radiation-resistant robot aimed at cleaning up the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Other firms, among them Hitachi and Toshiba, have also rolled out their own remote-controlled bots recently.

The plant was damaged during the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Robots are already working inside the plant, but none has been specifically designed for this kind of work.

One UK expert said that working inside a nuclear reactor was "a challenge for robotics".

Dubbed MEISTeR (Maintenance Equipment Integrated System of Telecontrol Robot), Mitsubishi's "tankbot" is about 1.3m (4ft) tall and has two arms with seven degrees of freedom each, able to hold loads of up to 15kg (33lb).

The robot is equipped with various tools and has electronics hardened to withstand radiation.

But Jeremy Pitt, deputy head of the Intelligent Systems and Networks Group at Imperial College London, said it was still a challenge for a remotely controlled machine to successfully replace humans in such harsh conditions.

"Operating in extreme environments requires a remarkable range of human skills that might otherwise be taken for granted," he said.


"Fundamentally, instead of programming a robot to follow a precise series of actions, in open environments the requirement is to programme it to improvise.

"This requires a fusion of conscious reasoning mechanisms, like learning, with subconscious sensing mechanisms."

Different design
Although currently there are several robots inside the plant, they have not been designed to repair a nuclear reactor.

For instance, the devices made by Qinetiq, introduced at Fukushima immediately after the disaster, were built to search for mines, said the firm's spokesman Mark Clark.

Using machines not made for such conditions was "always a compromise", he said, and better robots were needed.

"The operational environment within a large complex such as a power station poses high demands on these robots, which they were never designed to accommodate.

"If you are wishing to operate robots 24/7 inside a debris-filled power station in a radioactive area, it is much better to design the custom robot from the outset to meet specific tasks."

For instance, Toshiba says its robot has a wireless network that can be controlled in high radiation, looking for a better signal when reception is weak.

Mr Clark explained that the biggest problem associated with robots deployed into such zones was maintenance, because if repairs were needed, it would be difficult for humans to get anywhere near.

The solution would be to fix everything remotely, or while wearing heavy protective clothing.

To simplify the task, robots made to work inside a reactor would have to be "stripped of all unnecessary items", he said.

"If nuclear robots start leaking hydraulic fluid, they send an alarm before they fail so they can be quickly recovered. Others have the capability to shed or drop off parts of their manipulators so if they get caught up in debris they jettison the trapping section of robot, thus freeing them from the obstruction.

"Most nuclear robots operate on power provided by a trailing umbilical. This means there are no batteries to change and no refuelling issues to contend with."

Governments 'too inefficient' for future Moon landings

     Harrison Schmitt rushes across the lunar surface in search of important geological specimens. But just as the science got going the Apollo missions were scrapped.

     One of the last men to set foot on the Moon has said that private enterprise will be the driving force for a return to the lunar surface.
     Harrison Schmitt told the BBC that governments are "too inefficient" to send humans back to the Moon.
     Mr Schmitt's comments come on the 40th anniversary of Nasa's last manned mission to the Moon, Apollo 17.
     The veteran astronaut said that companies would soon embark on a new commercially driven space race.

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Start Quote

Government is too inefficient to make the costs come down to make another Moon landing economic. It will be an entrepreneurial effort”

Harrison Schmitt
Apollo 17 Astronaut
Speaking to the BBC World Service's Discovery programme, he said that he felt that private firms could make a return on the huge investment needed to set up extra-terrestrial mining operations by garnering a new source of fuel called helium-3. The gas is similar to the helium used to blow up balloons, but has properties that some scientists believe make it the ideal fuel for nuclear fusion reactions.

"The economy of space and economy of settlements of the Moon will be supported by helium-3. When you have a reason to build rockets and spacecraft and mining machines, costs will come down," he told BBC News.

Mr Schmitt's comments come in the year that a group of billionaires, which include the film director James Cameron and Google's chief executive, Larry Page, unveiled plans to mine asteroids using robotic probes. It was also the year that Elon Musk's firm SpaceX successfully delivered cargo to the International Space Station using its Dragon freight capsule on top of a Falcon rocket. So could the private sector take the next giant leap for mankind and send people back to the Moon? Harrison Schmitt believes that there is no other way.


Government is too inefficient to make the costs come down where it would be economic. It will be an entrepreneurial effort," he told the BBC.

Richard Nixon, the US President in 1972, had announced earlier that year that Apollo 17 would be the last mission to the Moon for the foreseeable future. Its launch on December 7 was a bittersweet moment for those involved in the US space programme and for all those who had followed their incredible exploits. Among those watching the launch was John Logsdon, now a professor at the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.

Melancholy


"There was an undertone of melancholy. We had done those wonderful missions and that was the end of it."

The event was the first night launch of the powerful Saturn V rocket. For a moment night turned to day as the fire from its five F1 engines bathed the Kennedy Space Center with an incandescent glow. Then, as Apollo 17 surged upward like a fiery angel, darkness.

Back on Earth, the Watergate scandal had broken, President Nixon was making plans to begin a Christmas mass bombing campaign on the Vietnamese and the US was riven with conflict and protest.


Very expensive

"There was no compelling reason to keep going with a very expensive programme," according to Prof Logsdon.

"We did it as a geopolitical act of competition with the Soviet Union to demonstrate the superior technological and organisational power of the US. It had very little to do with exploring."


Of course that never happened. Successive US Presidents have tried to match President Kennedy's inspirational challenge to Nasa and the nation more than 50 years ago:

"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win."

Since then Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, both Presidents Bush and the current administration have matched neither their predecessor's rhetoric nor the financial support for such an endeavour. So the big question is whether anyone will ever set foot on the Moon again?

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We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard”

John F Kennedy
US President 1961-1963
Prof Christopher Riley, a space historian at Lincoln University, is pessimistic.

"I suspect in my lifetime I have seen the last footprint on the Moon. It is very difficult for governments to do that kind of adventure at this time in the economic cycle."


International effort

First among the countries with the motivation and resources to send an astronaut to the Moon is China. It already has ambitious plans to send robotic explorers to the Moon next year. Those missions may prompt an Apollo-type effort by China to demonstrate its own technological power by sending an astronaut to the Moon.

Prof Logsdon believes that it would be far better for the next attempt at a Moonshot to be an international effort.

"One of the great political challenges of the next decade is whether China can be incorporated into the global space effort or whether because of a combination of its own intentions and the fact that they are not being welcomed - it puts them in a position where they choose to go it on their own."

For many who watched in awe as Nasa sent mission after mission to the Moon, a return to the lunar surface is not only possible but inevitable. It's a view that's implicit in the plaque left by the Apollo 17 astronauts which anticipates many more daring adventures.

"Here man completed his first exploration of the Moon - December 1972. May the spirit of peace in which we came be reflected in the lives of all mankind."