Dry ice vacuum cleaner robot bound for Fukushima

This is a great start and something positive to talk about in regards to radiation.

Very good for decontamination of materials and equipment but a hovercraft type vehicle is almost needed to go over terrain and capture these radio-active particles.

who is going to clean the machine.. and add dry ice every half hour.. why dont they let prisoners volunteer to do some clean up.. where does radiation go.. it does not just evaporate... it must blow downwind.. I know of a ranch where people from Sendai can come in Hawaii if they have skills and want to get out of this crazy place for a while..

Kimokekahuna Hawaii - Just to break it down for you : Prisoners are HUMAN BEINGS and are affected by radiation, just like you would be. .......................... A Robot (on the other hand) is a machine so it can take all kinds of exposure. .....Certainly the clean up ,restocking of dry ice, and any "waste" dsiposal would be done in quarantined places with workers fully covered............................

I imagine this thing moves pretty slow given the size of it. They need to connect some kind of tube to it so it can keep working, otherwise the dry ice will evaporate before it gets anywhere useful.

I hope it's effective, but does it really work or is it just another Japanese gadget soon to be forgotten.

where does radiation go

In the local rivers, of course. That's where the contractors have been dumping it, in case you missed the Asahi article.

just another Japanese gadget soon to be forgotten.

Just another excuse not to buy foreign technology, and waste time and money in the process.

where does radiation go.. it does not just evaporate... it must blow downwind..

From the article if you read it....

The caterpillar-tracked device blasts dry ice—frozen CO2—against floors and walls, evaporating and carrying radioactive substances with it, engineers said. The nozzle also sucks up the resulting gases.

Yubaru: Yes, it says the robot sucks up the gases via the nozzle, but it doesn't say where the radiation will end up as a result, hence the 'local rivers' joke up above, I believe.

Anyway, sounds like they've got a lot of work to do before these robots can achieve their intended purpose, but it's a good start.

Very interesting, Zichi-san.

And they want to build MORE reactors!

In a place where tectonic plates are bouncing off each other all the time and the "Big One" is sure to hit Tokyo sometime soon.

"But it's OK! We'll all be dead and gone before that problem hits."

Or will we?

. . .

Converter.sunlight into electricity - heat is possible.radioactive rays into electricity is possible.if you need a converter, you would have developed

Marginally less ridiculous than the Japanese Mayor who claimed that burning radioactive materials destroyed the radiation!

And having seen the stairwells, doorways and corridors inside Japanese NPPs, and considering that many are still full of rubble and steel, this robot, if it even works on site, will have a tough job getting around.

This is a very awesome invention.

About 20*20 km have been heavily contaminated, i.e. 400,000,000 sqm. That is to say it will take 22,800 years to decontaminate it for one robot, assuming flat and clear area. What a progress!

Bottom line: don't waste engineering resources to clean up this cr%&*#p but use it to develop energy saving, conservation, ... so that we can minimize NPP and non renewable energy sources.

As the reactors have melted cores which continue to emit radiation this machine is as much use as a band aid on a severed head....