March11, 2011, huge tsunami caused by Tohoku Pacific Ocean earthquake destroyed Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. It’s been four long years the incident occurred but TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Co.) is still on the process of cleaning up the reactor. For investing purpose, TEPCO has sent two robots this month, designed so that they can access damage from inside the reactor. They were abandoned as one of the robot got stuck inside the reactor and the other’s camera got damaged by the radiation.
The second robot was deployed on Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant’s No. 1 reactor on April 15 after the radiation damage to the camera of the first one. The radiation level inside the reactor is still high and it’s very dangerous for human, so there is no other way rather than relying on the bots for the clean-up process. The snake-like two robots are shape changing device designed to inspect the interior of the primary containment vessel. The robots are flexible to do any job like radiation measurement; it investigates along the 1st floor grating surfaces in the vessel, decontamination with dry ice blasts etc. It rolls on wheels to traverse narrow pipe and expands the shape to gain stability. The first robot got stuck on the pipe on 10th April after moving in 10 meters inside the reactor, blocking the paths of other robots and it was abandoned. Within 5 days they deployed a second robot but a week and even its camera malfunctioned due to radiation and it was also abandoned. But good thing is both the robots provided some essential information before they were eliminated.
Since, robot is the only way to clean-up the Fukushima reactor; we pray no more robotic disaster to block the work.
