Boston Dynamics' Spot Is Helping Chernobyl Move Towards Safe Decommissioning:
In terms of places where you absolutely want a robot to go instead of you, what remains of the utterly destroyed Chernobyl Reactor 4 should be very near the top of your list. The reactor, which suffered a catastrophic meltdown in 1986, has been covered up in almost every way possible in an effort to keep its nuclear core contained. But eventually, that nuclear material is going to have to be dealt with somehow, and in order to do that, it's important to understand which bits of it are just really bad, and which bits are the actual worst. And this is where Spot is stepping in to help.
[...] The goal for Spot in the short term is fully autonomous radiation mapping, which seems very possible. It'll also get tested with a wider range of sensor packages, and (happily for the robot) this will all take place safely back at home in the U.K. As far as Chernobyl is concerned, robots will likely have a substantial role to play in the near future. "Ultimately, Chernobyl has to be taken apart and decommissioned. That's the long-term plan for the facility. To do that, you first need to understand everything, which is where we come in with our sensor systems and robotic platforms," Megson-Smith tells us. "Since there are entire swathes of the Chernobyl nuclear plant where people can't go in, we'd need robots like Spot to do those environmental characterizations."
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Hyundai takes control of Boston Dynamics in $1.1B deal
Hyundai is officially purchasing a controlling stake in robot maker Boston Dynamics from SoftBank in a deal that values the company at $1.1 billion, the company announced today. The deal has been in the works for a while, according to recent a report from Bloomberg, and marks a major step into consumer robotics for Hyundai. Hyundai is taking approximately an 80 percent stake in the company while its previous owner, Softbank, will retain around 20 percent through an affiliate.
Hyundai says its investment will help its development of service and logistics robots, but that over time it hopes to build more humanoid robots for jobs like "caregiving for patients at hospitals." Other areas of interest include autonomous driving and smart factories.
EF could not be reached for comment.
Previously: Google to Sell Robotics Group Boston Dynamics
Boston Dynamics Produces a Wheeled Terror as Google Watches Nervously
SoftBank Acquires Boston Dynamics and Schaft From Google
Boston Dynamics Will Now Sell Any US Business its Own Spot Robot for $74,500
Boston Dynamics' Dog-Like Robot Spotted in Chernobyl
Boston Dynamics' Spot Is Helping Chernobyl Move Towards Safe Decommissioning
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 28 2020, @07:05PM (27 children)
Why does it need to be taken apart and decommissioned? The area around the plant has become a utopia for plant and wildlife, most of which still has fewer than 2 heads, and radioactivity levels are constantly declining. For instance here [youtube.com] is a video where they go on a tour right into reactor 4's control room which is directly adjacent to the reactor itself, and it's safe with proper precautions.
I also just think it's a brilliant reminder of the dangers of hubris and the arrogance of the present for which we constantly suffer. Chernobyl's meltdown was not an accident so much as unforeseen consequences of a very consciously planned and executed decision. Perhaps an especially apt reminder, that more ought to reflect upon, in our current times.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by sjames on Saturday November 28 2020, @07:44PM (14 children)
Chernobyl is pretty much the result of less experienced operators doing every don't in the manual. They tried to defy reality in order to meet a bureaucratic goal. Unsurprisingly, reality won the fight.
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Saturday November 28 2020, @10:46PM (13 children)
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(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday November 28 2020, @11:17PM (3 children)
If anyone's interested in some better details of fission physics and reactor dynamics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3d3rzFTrLg [youtube.com]
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by RandomFactor on Saturday November 28 2020, @11:43PM (2 children)
WTH is that t-shirt of?
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(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday November 29 2020, @12:02AM (1 child)
Well, most of it is an old depiction of evolution, and I assume that last image on the right is a nuclear explosion?
(Score: 2, Funny) by RandomFactor on Sunday November 29 2020, @12:05AM
It's the evolution of man shirt from Megabots.
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(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday November 28 2020, @11:59PM (7 children)
Well, in that they were both nuclear reactors being used for electric power generation, yes. But the designs are significantly different, and the dynamics and mechanism of the disasters were very different.
Both led to uncontrolled fission, but the TMI did not, and AFAIK could not "explode". There was fear of the containment building exploding due to hydrogen generation, accumulation, and ignition, but IIRC they vented it, much to the trepidation of many. The TMI problem happened because there was a stuck valve plus some coolant water flow restriction in some filters, and the reactor operators did not know definitively if there was enough cooling water in the reactor. It turned out there was not, which caused the reactor core to overheat and melt down, which meant they could no longer insert control rods to slow and stop the reaction (because everything was a melted steaming pile).
Chernobyl reactor was a different design, which is less costly to build, but unfortunately, as explained in this video and others: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3d3rzFTrLg, [youtube.com] has operating phases and dynamics that can result in an uncontrollable runaway reaction. Some physicists calculate that it was in fact a critical-mass fission bomb, but the explosion separated the fuel quickly enough that the explosive reaction damped itself in the process.
In a nutshell, from the linked video, they were trying some tests involving controlling the reactor at varying power levels. An extremely critical requirement for nuclear reactors is cooling water. Even after you shut them down, there's much residual reaction and heat. They rely on the energy stored in the spinning turbines to run cooling pumps until diesel generators are up and running, which might be only a few minutes. But the reactor was at a lower power than would be necessary to run the cooling pumps enough, and the delay until diesel generators were up and running was more than enough time for the Chernobyl reactor to go boom.
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Sunday November 29 2020, @12:20AM (6 children)
I was referring to the operators doing everything wrong, which was the case at TMI :-P
Essentially they were of the view that the cooling system was overfilled or 'going hard' (this belief due to instrumentation design flaws and training gaps) and turned OFF the emergency core cooling pumps. This did not lead to a positive outcome.
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(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday November 29 2020, @01:00AM (3 children)
You're correct, but the problem is the word: "wrong". It carries a connotation that they made mistakes, but in fact, they had bad data, or no data and were forced to make conclusions and take actions that ended up being incorrect, but again, they had no way to know.
The "wrong" was whoever it was that built and approved the plant being built without confirmation of valve position, and water flow sensing. After TMI they all have water flow sensing.
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Sunday November 29 2020, @02:54PM (2 children)
They assumed the instrumentation was telling them something different than what it actually did. This was TWO failures. 1) Design of the instrumentation 2) training on what the instrumentation actually told them.
Any typical expression for what those failures lead to mistake/wrong/error/incorrect has negative connotations associated with it in common usage. You're overthinking it.
But feel free to substitute in something you like better.
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(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday November 30 2020, @01:23AM
You may not be in the US, and I'm just trying to say that the word "wrong" sometimes is used to connote negligence, not just incorrectness. I'm just trying to say the operators did their best with the incorrect data they were given. I don't think any kind of training could have prevented the TMI problem, because again, a valve was stuck, but an indicator said the valve was closed, when in fact it was still partially open.
And, the operators did not have actual instrumentation showing coolant flow, safety valve flow, actual valve positions, reactor water level, etc., so they were guessing and speculating.
I'm sure you've read it 1,000 times, but here's a fairly concise summar:
https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/three-mile-island-accident.aspx [world-nuclear.org]
I would love to know what went on in the design review meetings, etc., like whether some engineer(s) suggested more instrumentation, and some arrogant manager shut them down, telling them the costs were already overrun.
AFAIK nobody was hurt, but the whole thing completely changed public opinion of "nukes".
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday November 30 2020, @02:46AM
Can't erase my other reply to your post, but I've re-reviewed some of what happened at TMI and there are many perspectives. I'll forever hold that the plant operators did not have enough, nor definitive information. Let's just say I have some connections to that world and they could have had more instrumentation (which was added to all nukes after TMI). The TMI operators had multiple failures that involved lack of some information, and some incorrect information.
That aside, they did make some wrong decisions based on what information they did have. But again, I can't blame them because they had conflicting information, and how do you decide which to believe? Which of the possible scenarios to believe is the real one?
I see too many things designed from an everything working correctly standpoint, rather than consider all of the possible failure scenarios.
(Score: 2, Informative) by toph on Sunday November 29 2020, @04:42AM (1 child)
Here's a great video explaining why the TMI operators did everything "wrong" but are not to blame for the outcome. Who Destroyed Three Mile Island? [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday November 30 2020, @02:29AM
Thanks. I've seen that. It's a bit long but really good.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 29 2020, @04:42PM
Without the Soviet engineering and callous disregard for human life.
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday November 28 2020, @08:04PM (1 child)
There's another, newer brilliant reminder in Fukushima, Japan. We can tear this one down now.
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Saturday November 28 2020, @11:16PM
At Fukishima, as of 2018,
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(Score: 4, Informative) by ledow on Saturday November 28 2020, @08:31PM (5 children)
Because if that stuff shifts or leaks, then it can quickly become far more dangerous again.
There's a pool of radioactive material that's just poured through the building and ended up in the middle of a bunch of rubble.
You can't dig under it, you can't wall it in (can't risk digging foundations for such a wall), and you can't just leave it alone because it's going to move over the years (hundreds of them!) and eventually find a way out. One earthquake, or building collapse, or sinkhole, or leak out of the basement into the land, and it could be catastrophic again, including aerosol radioactive compounds.
It's literally just eaten its way through the bottom of the building into the basement, there's no reason to think it will stop there, and we can barely get even radiation-hardened robots close enough to actually see what it's doing without them just disintegrating.
It's a risk that you can't take. That stuff should have been walled off and dug out decades ago, chopped into small pieces, sealed, and then dropped in a proper radioactive waste storage facility.
The land around it is already radioactive and will remain so for thousands of years, removing the material will make no difference to that part, it's already happened. But if it happened again, or gets into a groundwater, or escapes its containment, then you have another very serious problem to deal with on top of everything else.
(Score: 2, Redundant) by Runaway1956 on Saturday November 28 2020, @10:55PM (1 child)
Your concern about groundwater is perfectly justified. Otherwise - the stuff can only go down. It's not coming up again, without human intervention. And, it's not likely to slide off toward a compass point. Down it the only direction the radioactive mass is likely to go. If not for concern for the groundwater, I'd be tempted to just let it go.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday November 28 2020, @11:02PM
I mostly agree, but I wonder if there are crude oil and/or especially methane deposits further down, what might happen. So maybe it's better to try to get at it now.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday November 28 2020, @11:15PM (2 children)
I agree with your sentiment, but AFAIK and remember from some documentaries, it's far far too hot for humans to get anywhere near it. Just building the 2 "sarcophagi" had to be done in very short shifts by a stream of new workers. The newer bigger arched one (looks like a giant quonset hut) had to be built at a distance and rolled into place on 2 sets of railroad tracks. A truly amazing project: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170101-a-new-tomb-for-the-most-dangerous-disaster-site-in-the-world [bbc.com]
It's good that something is being done, and I'm glad to see the US is able to help.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 29 2020, @12:49AM (1 child)
Lest they be forgotten, some of those workers were martyrs. The Soviet admitted to about sixty dead. They later admitted that at least 6000 died early deaths as a result of their work at Chernobyl. Some workers had little idea what they were getting into, and others knew full well the risks they were taking.
Russia has never had a shortage of potential martyrs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 5, Touché) by Grishnakh on Sunday November 29 2020, @03:38AM
We could easily get a bunch of Americans to go work there. All we have to do is tell them the radiation stuff is just a "hoax" and that you can wash it off with bleach.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Saturday November 28 2020, @09:46PM (3 children)
If everything's done correctly, it works properly. Hate to say it, but if everything's not done correctly, other energy generation mechanisms don't have these complex/extended time/affected area repercussions when they fail. And as t approaches say half a human lifetime, somewhere, the cumulative probability of human error (political->technical->incompetence/negligence) eventually falls out of your favor.
If you don't accept the scientific basis, consider at least that this is still inserting itself into the news cycle 30+ years later.
Maybe a forklift-replaceable "no user-serviceable parts inside" battery-like model could work around this?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Sunday November 29 2020, @03:41AM
This reminds me of how Italy voted to abandon nuclear power generation, and just buy nuclear-generated power from France. It wasn't because they thought nuclear technology was bad, just that they didn't trust Italians to do it properly and safely, especially with their problems with corruption and organized crime.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2020, @01:27PM (1 child)
You're also leaving out one critical factor.
You're talking about nuclear which has still been a relative pittance in terms of overall energy generation - in the ballpark of 10%. Scaling it up to produce a significant chunk of the world's energy would likely not result in a proportional increase in accidents but disproportionately larger. When you have relatively few stations there's going to be a greater attention to detail, greater scrutiny, and simply a high quality of people maintaining and operating the stations. As it expands the opposite becomes true. So you not only have vastly more plants, but an substantial decline in quality control. And if you want to get into things like breeder reactors, the complexity and dangers also increase exponentially.
Another issue people also don't consider is that uranium is extremely rare. People are quick to point out you can extract it plentiful quantities from even just the ocean water. And that is true, but it also sends costs skyrocketing. If nuclear became a norm, we'd quickly end up seeing the exact same geopolitical problems with uranium as we have with oil. Kind of dumb to go down that route when other energy generation is not only safer, but also has no real issue of scarcity. I'd also add things like solar have also substantial room for technological innovation, but nuclear isn't really going to get much more efficient.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Sunday November 29 2020, @04:57PM
So much in just a paragraph. 10% is not a pittance particularly since it's mostly on as opposed to intermittent sources. And there are economies of scale to safety. For example, the world's increased usage of cars didn't result in a disproportionate increase in car accidents. Instead, it was the reverse. That's because you can scale attention to detail and greater scrutiny (some which has its own economies of scale). Meanwhile, with more plants, you get increased knowledge of failure modes and greater experience with dealing with them.
Another example is rocketry. SpaceX hasn't spend as much effort and resources to make its Falcon 9 safe compared to the Space Shuttle. But the difference is that the much higher launch frequency of the Falcon 9, combined with the far greater experience of the people managing and operating the system (101 launches over 10 years plus a launch abort system as opposed to 135 launches over 30 years) means that SpaceX can and probably will make the Falcon 9 much safer and lower failure rate than the Shuttle could ever achieve.
As to the last sentence, you can't have an exponential increase from a single step/change. It's just a change. Let us also keep in mind that storing used fuel rods onsite at Fukushima (because where else are you going to store them?) has caused real harm far greater than the imaginary exponential increases complexity and dangers of breeder reactors.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 28 2020, @09:53PM
See Spot.
See Spot run.
See Spot run into a ruined wall, knocking it over. See the wall knock a piece of radioactive material on top of another, resulting in critical mass.
See Spot run from nuclear fire.
See Spot evaporate in nuclear fire. See the city evaporate in nuclear fire.
See spots as your eyes dissolve. Writhe as your bones boil.
Wasn't that a nice story? Nighty night, children!