Thursday 21 April 2011

Robot enters crippled power plant

The Packbot, from the US, is exploring damaged buildings and taking radiation readings in areas of the stricken reactors still considered too dangerous for humans to enter.
The plant, on the north-eastern coast, was devastated by the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that hit Japan on March 11.
About 210,000 people living near the nuclear reactors were evacuated when radiation levels soared.
The death toll following the disaster has been raised to 14,603, with a further 13,691 still listed as missing.
Our video shows the Packbot, equipped with cameras and sensors, maneuvering through the plant's buildings and opening doors.
Shogo Fukuda, of the Tokyo Electric Power Comany which runs the plant, said it had only just begun using one of the two robots, which were supplied by iRobot in Bedford, Massachusetts.
It took crews several weeks to learn how to use the complex devices which are equipped with cameras and sensors.


The Packbot has been able to measure radiation inside reactors 1 and 3, but high humidity fogged up the lenses and prevented it from getting a reading in reactor 2.
Humans must still do the sophisticated engineering needed to stem the radiation, but the robots are going in first to monitor when it will be safe for people to enter.
An earlier version of the PackBot was used in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Robots were also used after the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear disasters.
taken from http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3539942/Robot-enters-crippled-power-plant.html

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