It might make more sense to have back-up pumps powered by the heat difference, Stirling engines or something similar.

“Radiation” refers to all sorts of different particles, of differing types and different energies. The calculations of what is required to completely stop all of the radiation from any widely mixed source such as this is quite simple: a nearly infinite amount of material. Surprised? That’s because I used the absolute “completely stop”. The much more practical question is how much shielding is necessary to reduce the level to some acceptable (comparable to natural background) levels. – Now there the answer gets amazingly complex. As others have pointed out above, as you put in more material to stop high energy gammas, that in turn produces scattered radiation of lower energies, and additional x-ray emissions as well as the aforementioned “braking radiation”. Suffice it to say that the thick steel and concrete is a reasonable start, so shielding people and electronics becomes difficult.

To answer Mister44, ionizing radiation will cause unexpected (often tiny) groups of electrons to be released inside the electrical circuits at unexpected times and places – that gets them all “confused” since usually everything is so orderly inside computers and such. So its not short circuits but more like bits changing from 1 to 0 or vice-versa. Robots don’t work well when confused. Yes there are ways that satellites and high-reliability systems deal with the inevitable bit-flips that occur all the time – but those are not the usual robot applications. Bomb-disposal robot makers would never invest in extreme rad-hard systems and architectures because the market is (was?) nearly zero dollars for that specialization.

Still it’s important to note that shielding is not a perfect solution, reductions in time and distance (especially distance) are also required.

The “camera” would be a bundle of fiber optic filaments. The wheels would be spun by pneumatic fluid inside. All of the parts would be actuated by fluid or air.

I can’t even back up my vacuum cleaner without it becoming tangled in the power cord.

Wait, what? Scaling walls?

I wonder how long it would take a team of engineers to modify a conventional truck with a water cannon to make it remotely controllable. Could be a couple of weeks if one was willing to accept high risk operational safety (will it lose control and back over me?).

The basic hobby style of radio control has a long history of pure analog signaling, and therefore not highly susceptible to the radiation induced misbehaviors as digital electronics are, but they suffer from other forms of low reliability and difficulty in assuring safety. Even the hobbyists are moving more and more to digital RC. There are few commercial quality systems that don’t currently have at least some components that are digital.

The current situation requires an existing “robotic” (perhaps better teleoperated) system with some applicable capabilities (stair climbing, door opening, motion on uneven floor surfaces, etc) that has been tested and shown to be reasonably safe – else a robot could just add to the complexity of the problem. No need for autonomy, just a robust mechanical system that has some dexterity and can carry in some cameras and a few radiation detectors and link that data back. In an environment that was never intended for a robot, and now likely strewn with debris and flooded with water that is a mighty tall order.

I’m sure there are a few out there with systems that have some useful capabilities – and they are all eager to get them into the scene. We can hope that some truly well-designed and capable systems are able to get in there and help, but I can understand that those who are currently tasked with managing the disaster are going to have trouble sifting through the options being presented – and its decidedly NOT a good idea to just let anyone come in and try.

As for lead suit guy… Suit would probably have to be too thick to be practical. Also there are secondary effects that come from the shielding. For example when a high energy beta particle is stopped by a dense material such as lead you get secondary electromagnetic radiation from the abrupt slow down. This is why you see plexiglass used in labs since the deceleration of the particles is not so abrupt and secondary radiation much less energetic. So if you have awesome lead suit to protect from from gamma radiation you might get fried from it stopping the beta particles. ( my knowledge on the subject is fairly out of date and has probably had song lyrics from the past decade or 2 over writing it). eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremsstrahlung_radiation

As for Robotics – I would not be surprised if these events really kicked the japanese robotics industry forward in the coming decades as people ponder questions like the ones raised in the article.

http://nuclear.fukushima.jp.nyud.net/robots.txt
User-Agent: *
Disallow: /

Now we have robots that can do very specific tasks like this in easy-to-navigate environments. But the environment at Fukushima is radioactive, hot, and probably full of debris. I don’t think our robots are that “smart” yet. Technology solves some problems (and creates others), but technology can’t solve problems that we haven’t foreseen.

I’m also guessing that the robots used in the prior nuclear disasters were not first responders, but instead were modified robots designed to perform specific tasks, and were utilized in later phases of the disaster like cleanup and monitoring.

As Tribune mentioned, the new awareness this disaster is creating will push development into new areas that until now have not been the robot designers primary goals.

http://bigbrowser.blog.lemonde.fr/2011/03/17/fukushima-des-robots-francais-au-secours-de-la-centrale/

the INTRA group (created after Tchernobyl)

http://www.groupe-intra.com/index2.htm

As an aside on robots, the radiation won’t be nice to most off the shelf robots either. Not that they wouldn’t be of some use, but it’s something to think about.

And getting a robot to carry a hose over there isn’t the only issue. It’s that the pumps themselves have been a problem, along with the power to the site. It *seems* like it wouldn’t be that hard to drop in some generators and pumps, but my guess is that it’s more difficult than we think.

Tepco hasn’t proven to be completely forthright about things, but I doubt that they, or all the other people working on this, are complete morons.

Have you found a contact person yet? I found The Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue and they may be able to help

http://crasar.org/contact/

Hope you are able to find a contact to get your robots to Japan.

All the best,

C.T. Kirkpatrick