A small robot entered a damaged reactor at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant on Tuesday, beginning a two-week, high-stakes mission to retrieve for the first time a tiny amount of melted fuel debris from the bottom.
        • lud@lemm.eeEnglish
          14·
          2 months ago

          The union would be extremely powerful with just one robot though. There would be no competition or different opinions. If the single robot strikes to get better working conditions or better pay, the entire workforce is on strike.

          • sbv@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            10·
            2 months ago

            yes yes, but the robot cannot strike, you see, because one robot must make the strike motion, another robot must second the strike motion, and then all the robots must vote. if there is no robot to second the strike motion, then no robots may vote, meaning the strike cannot pass.

            • flicker@lemmy.worldEnglish
              8·
              2 months ago

              I would like to add to this conversation, “I’ve talked it over with myself and I’ve decided I’m going on strike,” is an extremely powerful thing to say.

              …I didn’t promise my addition would be valuable.

    • kingthrillgore@lemmy.mlEnglish
      21·
      2 months ago

      It may take a century not because of robot costs, but because the materials haven’t decayed enough to store in a dry cask.

  • moody@lemmings.worldEnglish
    48·
    2 months ago

    This is what we need AI for. Robots that can independantly handle this type of task that is too dangerous for humans.

    Fuck the generative garbage we have now. Work on this stuff instead.

    • nyan@lemmy.cafeEnglish
      36·
      2 months ago

      The Soviets never sent humans into the reactor to remove melted core material. The remains of the Chernobyl No. 4 core are still there inside the sarcophagus, and I don’t think anyone was making serious plans to remove them even before the Ukraine war got in the way.

      (The job that got so many Soviet workers exposed was moving solid radioactive debris from the exploded core so that the initial containment sarcophagus could be built and the other three reactors on the site restarted. Nothing comparable was required at Fukushima because the explosions there didn’t breach any of the cores, thus no chunks of highly radioactive graphite to shovel off the roofs. I understand that the Soviets did try robots, but radiation isn’t good for electronics and, well, it was Soviet equipment in 1986—they just weren’t very effective.)

      • VonReposti@feddit.dkEnglish
        6·
        2 months ago

        They actually tried using a West German state of the art police robot but it failed. IIRC it still sits broken on the roof to this day.

    • kingthrillgore@lemmy.mlEnglish
      6·
      2 months ago

      Because they’re going to use specialized cranes to pull that shit out and bury it over the next 100 years (special military operation pending). It was installed with the New Safe Confinement. The entire point of the NSC was to protect the site from disturbance and collapse while they waited for it to be safe enough to disassemble the plant.

    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      because putting people in those buildings is sketchy, and the serve almost zero static concern, especially with modern survey robots and technology that allows us to very easily analyze this stuff without having to set foot near it.