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Robotics Science

Robot Saves the Day at Radiation Lab 235

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the johnny-five-is-radioactive dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Nature.com is reporting that records released this week by the US defense department read almost like a bad movie plot. Back in October a high-security radiation lab had a cylinder filled with radiation get trapped in its delivery tube network. Fortunately a specially designed bomb-disposal robot was able to retrieve the canister before the radiation was able to eat its way free.
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Robot Saves the Day at Radiation Lab More

Robot Saves the Day at Radiation Lab

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  • Dupe (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ajwitte ( 849122 ) <slashdot@andrewwitte.com> on Monday December 19, 2005 @11:29PM (#14296529) Homepage
    Dupe of http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/ 17/0226200&tid=216&tid=14 [slashdot.org] This version links to a different story though... (fp?)
    • Darn, I was too slow!

    • Re:Dupe (Score:3, Insightful)

      by metlin ( 258108 )
      Same story, different news source.

      Not that it seems to make any difference, but do the editors ever read the stories? *EVER*?

      Sheesh.

    • Re:Dupe (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Ucklak ( 755284 )
      You know, we really get tired of MOST of the dupes here and as we have discussed before, sometimes dupes are a good thing because we don't get all the stories because we're not connected all the time.

      This is the first I have seen this story posted here although judging by some of the comments, a quick search would display the duplicate story.
      I wonder if there should be a notification icon or something to denote dupes though. Just to appease the dupe hating crowd.
      • > You know, we really get tired of MOST of the dupes here and as we have discussed before, sometimes dupes are a good thing because we don't get all the stories because we're not connected all the time.

        It's also nice at Christmas time, because the needy can sift through the old comments and find stuff to post under the new story to boost their karma.
      • You know, we really get tired of MOST of the dupes here and as we have discussed before, sometimes dupes are a good thing because we don't get all the stories because we're not connected all the time.

        Get off your ass and read the stories from when you weren't connected then, they're still there if you click on the date. You're a tiny proportion of all the users, better to inconvenience you a little bit than inconvenience everyone. Besides, if there weren't so many dupes you wouldn't have missed as many sto

  • Radiation - Seems to be a recurring problem. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ruff_ilb ( 769396 ) on Monday December 19, 2005 @11:29PM (#14296530) Homepage
    First the "Robot Saves Troops" story and now this. Pretty cool how robots are actually helping us nowadays.

    "By now, the robot had been in the radiation zone for 90 minutes. The team decided to regroup, but the robot's electronics had failed and it was rooted to the spot. Thankfully, the team had tied a rope around the machine, and it was hauled in, almost knocking over a radiation shield in the process."

    This part sounds remarkably familiar...

    "On the third day, and after three weeks of continuous warning sirens..."

    Whoah. It took them THREE DAYS? I'm glad this wasn't (obviously) a really serious problem. If it were some sort of radiation based bomb, they'd get fried.

    From reading these two articles, it seems that if we could somehow shield these robots from outside radiation, these jobs would be done in a flash.

    Unfortunately, we need them to recieve radation because if they DON'T, we can't communicate with them.

    Now, I'm not a physicist, but might a Faraday Cage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage [wikipedia.org]) built with an appropriately sized mesh do the job? Just as a microwave lets some radiation out (we can see the burrito cooking inside) while keeping the harmful radiation in (we don't get toasted by the microwaves), couldn't this be used to do the reverse, that is, allow communication in while shielding the robot from radiation?

    I realize that these cages must be in a specific shape to work correctly, but if the core components at least, can be shielded, this go a long way towards solving our problems.

    Heck, the arms and stuff we can even make (god forbid) mechanical, perhaps in such a way that they won't get owned by the radiation at all.

    • A little time discrepancy... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by FearTheFrail ( 666535 ) on Monday December 19, 2005 @11:33PM (#14296548)
      "On the third day, and after three weeks of continuous warning sirens..."

      Whoah. It took them THREE DAYS? I'm glad this wasn't (obviously) a really serious problem. If it were some sort of radiation based bomb, they'd get fried.


      Questions are begged:

      1. Was it the robot that had been used for three days?
      2. Or was that just how long the cobalt had been in there?
      3. ...either way, what in the hell is triggering warning sirens for three weeks straight in a big-time radiation lab?

      • Re:A little time discrepancy... (Score:5, Informative)

        by fossa ( 212602 ) <pat7.gmx@net> on Monday December 19, 2005 @11:58PM (#14296653) Journal

        The cobalt was stuck for three weeks. The warning sirens are a government regulation, something to do with informing workers of radiation source. The robot was brought in, but it took a while for the team (from Albuquerque) to get ready to go to White Sands with their robot.

        This slashdot article is dupe. See sandia.gov [sandia.gov] for more poorly written details.

        No, they wouldn't be fired; they work at a national lab :-P Seriously though, electronics that can handle intense radiation are expensive.

      • Re:A little time discrepancy... (Score:4, Informative)

        by InvalidError ( 771317 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @12:21AM (#14296753)
        TFA says the alarm was caused by a cylinder wedged inside a transport tube by a defective switch and that it took them three weeks (presumably of trying everything available in-house) to come up with the robot idea.

        The /. article could have been titled "Mighty Mouse strikes back" - TFA says the robot used was called "Mighty Mouse 2".

    • Re:Radiation - Seems to be a recurring problem. (Score:5, Informative)

      by ajwitte ( 849122 ) <slashdot@andrewwitte.com> on Monday December 19, 2005 @11:33PM (#14296549) Homepage
      Now, I'm not a physicist, but might a Faraday Cage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage [wikipedia.org]) built with an appropriately sized mesh do the job? Just as a microwave lets some radiation out (we can see the burrito cooking inside) while keeping the harmful radiation in (we don't get toasted by the microwaves), couldn't this be used to do the reverse, that is, allow communication in while shielding the robot from radiation?
      A Faraday cage would only be effective against EM waves, not against particle emissions.
      • Radiation shielding is a job that lead does fairly effectively. It's possible to design electronics that are much more radiation-tolerant than conventional electronics, which is why so much NASA and other satellite gear is low-CPU-horsepower antique-looking stuff (e.g. when the Space Shuttle crew first took a Compaq 386 laptop up with them, it had significantly more CPU than the entire rest of the equipment on board, but it's not designed to last a long time in radiation environments.) But if you don't ha
        • The US no longer builds nuclear weapons. They actually are dismantling some. Sandia does a lot of SIMULATIONS of such weapons. I'm sure they have materials around to gather data for the simulations but they don't make bombs anymore. When the bombs were made, most were made at a facility outside Amarillo, TX.
          • That is correct, the US isn't building any more nuclear fission weapons. Now they are working on much higher yeild FUSION bombs. France has volunteered (and been suckered in) to test the 'power' equivalent of the technology, so if France suddenly disappears (and a big chunk of the UK) one day, they'll probably abort the research.

            But thats just my opinion. ;)

            cheers.

          • Re:That's a job for *Lead* (and prior planning.) (Score:4, Informative)

            by georgewilliamherbert ( 211790 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @03:01AM (#14297104)
            We are still producing all the components, including a recently revitalized capability to manufacture the fissile pit (technical term for the uranium or plutonium core). We didn't have that ability for about a decade, but have been able to in small quantities again for a few years.

            Bombs were being completely dissassembled and rebuilt throughout, for reliability testing and analysis purposes. In some cases, most or all of the other components were replaced.
          • You mean this [pantex.com] facility? I did an internship there. When Google Maps came out, it was one of the first things I checked out. I was really surprised that google had such good pictures [google.com] of it, then I saw that aerial photo.

      • Re:Radiation - Seems to be a recurring problem. (Score:5, Informative)

        by LWATCDR ( 28044 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @12:42AM (#14296803) Homepage Journal
        Actually Cobalt 60 is a Gamma emitter. Gamma is EM but very high frequency. The majority of the radiation from it is not particle radiation unless you count photons are particle radiation.
        The holes in the shielding on a microwave have to be smaller than the wavelength of the microwaves. Gamma has a wavelength smaller than visible light so the holes would have to be too small for even light to pass through. It is also a lot more energetic so the thin metal shielding used in a microwave wouldn't be of much use. So a faraday cage "could" work if it was thick enough and had small enough crystal structure the be effective the only problem is I don't know of any material that meets those requirements off the top of my head. A high density shield of say, lead would be far simpler.
    • Unfortunately, we need them to recieve radation because if they DON'T, we can't communicate with them.

      You actually give a solution with your comment...

      the team had tied a rope around the machine, and it was hauled in

      What if instead of a rope it was a well-shielded data cable? Run the robot on a lengthy cable coming off a spool, and then you don't need to use wireless communication.

    • Re:Radiation - Seems to be a recurring problem. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cbreaker ( 561297 ) on Monday December 19, 2005 @11:46PM (#14296597) Journal
      Well, you solved it. Good job. Too bad these folks that play with this ultra-radioactive cobalt (the kind that kills you in 30 seconds or less) every day didn't think of that.
    • Whoah. It took them THREE DAYS? I'm glad this wasn't (obviously) a really serious problem. If it were some sort of radiation based bomb, they'd get fried.
      Why act rashly in a non-emergency situation? Perhaps they could have fixed the problem faster, but had the opportunity to work more deliberately, and took it.

    • Re:Radiation - Seems to be a recurring problem. (Score:5, Informative)

      by CharlesEGrant ( 465919 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @12:16AM (#14296734)
      Now, I'm not a physicist, but might a Faraday Cage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage [wikipedia.org]) built with an appropriately sized mesh do the job? Just as a microwave lets some radiation out (we can see the burrito cooking inside) while keeping the harmful radiation in (we don't get toasted by the microwaves), couldn't this be used to do the reverse, that is, allow communication in while shielding the robot from radiation?

      I realize that these cages must be in a specific shape to work correctly, but if the core components at least, can be shielded, this go a long way towards solving our problems.

      It isn't the shape of the Faraday cages that's special. It's the size of the mesh. The mesh has to be significantly smaller then the wavelength of the radiation you are trying to keep out. Microwaves have a wavelength of 1-300mm. The wave-length of gamma rays is less then 0.00000000001mm. That's much smaller then the distance between atoms in a typical solid, so the idea of a mesh becomes kind of absurd.

      I doubt that the problem with shielding is communications. After all you could put the shielding on the side facing the radiation, and leave the side towards the crew open. Gamma radiation doesn't go around corners. Or, as others have suggested, you could just run a cable to the robot. I think the actual problem is weight. Lead is heavy. You might be able to pile a ton of lead around the cpus and memroy, and just crank up the horsepower of the motors. However, by their very purpose you can't put the sensors behind lead sheilds, since all they would see then would be the lead shield. Not very helpful.
      • The property of gamma rays to pass through anything is actually used to make shielded sensors and cameras. The optical wavelengths are bounced into the sensor with mirrors or prisms, while the gamma radiation goes through the mirror and past the sensor. It's not perfect, and you need a point radiation source and enough shielding to matter around the sensor itself, but it can be done.
    • >>> First the "Robot Saves Troops" story and now this. Pretty cool how robots are actually helping us nowadays.

      No - this is exactly the same story, around the same incident at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. This story is a dupe.

      http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/ 17/0226200&tid=216 [slashdot.org]
    • First the "Robot Saves Troops" story and now this. Pretty cool how robots are actually helping us nowadays.

      Yeah, it's better than it was back in the day when they use to enslave us or just shoot us with their ray guns. The 50s must have sucked.
    • Now, I'm not a physicist, but might a Faraday Cage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage [wikipedia.org]) built with an appropriately sized mesh do the job? Just as a microwave lets some radiation out (we can see the burrito cooking inside) while keeping the harmful radiation in (we don't get toasted by the microwaves), couldn't this be used to do the reverse, that is, allow communication in while shielding the robot from radiation?

      I realize that these cages must be in a specific shape to work correctly, but if the co

  • Interesting..... what application? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) * on Monday December 19, 2005 @11:29PM (#14296532) Homepage Journal
    the base's Gamma Irradiation Facility was paralysed when a cylinder containing cobalt-60 became lodged in one of the lab's air-pressure tubes,

    Yikes! Cobalt-60 is almost as bad as it gets. Cobalt 60 radiation dosages are almost twice as bad as the actual dosage of radiation one would get from the fallout of an actual atomic device which sort of begs the question of what they are doing with it? Are they modeling fallout? Or are they experimenting with dirty bombs? Lining the inside of atomic devices with heavy metals and other elements is a way to create much more radioactive bombs that have long lasting radiation effects.

    Although there *are* civilian applications such as medical therapy devices....

    The canister, about the size of a salt cellar, was jammed against a seesaw-shaped switch inside the tube that was stuck in the wrong orientation.

    OK, so this sounds like bad design just waiting for someone to screw up and reveal the design flaw.

    • Yikes! Cobalt-60 is almost as bad as it gets. Cobalt 60 radiation dosages are almost twice as bad as the actual dosage of radiation one would get from the fallout of an actual atomic device which sort of begs the question of what they are doing with it? Are they modeling fallout? Or are they experimenting with dirty bombs? Lining the inside of atomic devices with heavy metals and other elements is a way to create much more radioactive bombs that have long lasting radiation effects.

      According to this page [princeton.edu] and
      • My guess is that they're using it to do testing of aircraft components or other heavy military equipment. Some days X-Rays just don't penetrate well enough to image the things that you want, and you need something stonger, and for some applications, gamma rays do the job well. For other applications, you want various different kinds of beams from cyclotrons/synchrotrons/etc., such as protons or whatever. So you've gone and flown your airplane past its design parameters, or crashed your tank into walls a

    • Re:Interesting..... what application? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Malor ( 3658 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @12:00AM (#14296663) Journal
      The article that I read several days ago said that they use the cobalt-60 to test radiation resistance... they want to see the effects that high radiation levels will have on various pieces of military and civilian hardware. They set up their test gear, shuttle in the cobalt via pneumatic tube, let the gear cook in the extremely intense radiation, and then shuttle the cobalt back into a 'safe' area. I believe the original article claimed that cobalt is good for this, because it doesn't make the whole area permanently radioactive, though I'm not familiar with the reason why. (gamma radiation, maybe???)

      The writeup on the article is misleading. Radiation doesn't 'eat its way free'... fer chrissake, people! Acids eat things. Radiation just ... radiates. And it was ALREADY free, that's why the needed the darn robot. That whole testing area was absolutely lethal to human beings, even in heavy protective gear. Even the robot couldn't survive it very long... they thought 50 minutes. In actual practice, it lasted longer... but the movement system did fail, so they had to drag it out with a rope.

      To the person asking about building a Faraday cage around it.... as far as I know, a Faraday cage isn't an absolute barrier, it's just a very strong one. It attenuates a signal by a very great deal, making signals interception very difficult. But in this case, the 'signal' (the cobalt) is so incredibly powerful that a Faraday cage would just take the edge off, as it were. If my limited understanding of radiation is correct, it'd be just about as effective as sunglasses in front of a supernova. (and I'm not sure that Faraday cages even *work* at these frequencies... the radiation might just punch right through the shield material.)
    • "Cobalt-60 is almost as bad as it gets."

      Someone has never heard of Cobalt-Thorium-G.

  • Not Really (Score:4, Funny)

    by MrNonchalant ( 767683 ) on Monday December 19, 2005 @11:30PM (#14296536)
    "It sounds like something you might pitch to a Hollywood studio. A high-security US radiation lab is thrown into turmoil when a cylinder spewing out deadly radiation gets trapped in its network of delivery tubes. A robot is sent to try and free the canister before the radiation eats away at its circuits. After a string of failures, the intrepid machine saves the day."

    Not hardly. For that you'd need Tommy Lee Jones and terrorists to some how get involved.

  • Filled with Radiation? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19, 2005 @11:31PM (#14296538)
    I didn't know 'radiation' was tangable. I'll have to update the Wikipedia article...

  • Still, it all comes down to the ol'screwdriver (Score:5, Funny)

    by digitaldc ( 879047 ) * on Monday December 19, 2005 @11:35PM (#14296557)
    On the third day, and after three weeks of continuous warning sirens, the team sent in the robot with a metal screwdriver. It unscrewed the plate, dislodged the switch, and sent the tube safely to its storage bay.

    Dude you mean the government spent $24 million on this project and all we needed to fix it was a screwdriver?

  • radiation eating its way free? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by snStarter ( 212765 ) on Monday December 19, 2005 @11:37PM (#14296567)
    I mean say WHAT? Are the little gamma rays gonna start taking apart the shielding? I dont' think so. They can destroy the solid state components of the robot of course.

    So not only is it a DUP the right-up is by someone whose entire education about radiation appears to have come from watching 1950s science fiction movies.

    OR misread the article.
    • If you read the article, it talks about the radiation eating away at the robot's circuits. Still a bit cheesy, but at least _slightly_ more accurate than the AC post implied.
    • you're quite correct... a Co-60 source isn't going to eat through the cicuitry... That's just stupid... It can produce enough heat to melt circuits (assuming it's a very high-fluence source), but the article must've been written by someone ignorant of health physics, since it's quite obvious Co-60 isn't an acid, eating through a container... Finally, these sort of tests were likely done for gamma spectroscopy, where you can use gammas to examine imperfections in materials(it is probably the most common rad
    • Ohio University has its own reactor which is used for experiments in power generation as well as irradiation of materials. Anyone from nearby colleges can request time with the reactor to irradiate just about anything they want.

      To get the material close to the core, pressurized tubes are used. The canisters that hold the material are made of some sort of plastic-like material for the specific purpose of letting radiation pass through. The problem is, repeated exposure causes the material to become brittle
    • . . . they had a specially designed bomb disposal robot on hand.

      I'd hate to be around when a cylinder full of radiation get trapped with nothing but one of those generic, off-the-shelf bomb disposal robots on hand.

  • Not to be picky (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lifebouy ( 115193 ) on Monday December 19, 2005 @11:38PM (#14296571) Journal
    But "radiation" can't be stored in a container. Radioactive material, however, can be. Add to that the fact that the submitter was anonymous, and this story should not have been picked up. Hmm. I wonder whats on digg right now.

    • Re:Not to be picky (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dun Malg ( 230075 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @01:30AM (#14296910) Homepage
      But "radiation" can't be stored in a container. Radioactive material, however, can be. Add to that the fact that the submitter was anonymous, and this story should not have been picked up. Hmm. I wonder whats on digg right now.

      Damn straight. It's ignoramuses like the anonymous submitter who keep irradiated food off the market when there's no rational reason for it. I could be dining off vacu-packed and irradiated steaks all week on a backcountry hiking trip, but because a bunch of dumbshits don't know the difference between "radiation" and "radioactive" I'm stuck with MREs and freeze dried crap.

    • Add to that the fact that the submitter was anonymous, and this story should not have been picked up...

      I agree. The submitter should have made up stuff about military troops and radiation proof robots [slashdot.org]. Only then would it have been worthy of a slashdot story.

  • Please..... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fractalrock ( 662410 ) on Monday December 19, 2005 @11:41PM (#14296579)
    ...tell me the poster is joking around with the 'filled with radiation' and 'before the radiation was able to eat its way free' comments.

    I was filled with radiation once.....once.
  • I smell the next "based on a true story" hollywood stinker. Whoopee!!

  • Inspired by Actual Events (Score:5, Funny)

    by pete-classic ( 75983 ) <hutnick@gmail.com> on Monday December 19, 2005 @11:44PM (#14296591) Homepage Journal
    The blockbuster event of Summer 2006: Robot Hero

    Starring Ben Affleck as the fucking robot.

  • Flood the tube? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by phorm ( 591458 ) on Monday December 19, 2005 @11:47PM (#14296599) Journal
    If they couldn't get the cannister out, would flooding the tube with some form of radiation blocking/absorbing material have worked? Maybe they could have injected it with molten lead, leaded water, or some other radiation dampening material (probably not a permanent solution, but a time-giver).

    • Re:Flood the tube? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Shimbo ( 100005 )
      If they couldn't get the cannister out, would flooding the tube with some form of radiation blocking/absorbing material have worked? Maybe they could have injected it with molten lead, leaded water, or some other radiation dampening material.

      Nah, it would just make it messier to deal with, and unlikely to very effective - you need a good mass of material to stop hard gamma, and a transport tube is not a good place to try to contain a radioactive liquid.

      Rule 1 of radiation protection: inverse square law beat
    • By shielding a heavy gamma source with lead, you will reduce the gamma-intensity

      You will also get the lead to start behaving as a beta-emitter in many cases

      Bad idea.
  • tell us why the robot isn't permanently irradiated

    • Irradiation doesn't make things radioactive. Exposure to a neutron flux can cause materials to become activated, but unless you've got a nuclear reactor around this isn't likely to be a problem.

    • Cobalt-60 emits gamma radiation, which is comprised of high-energy photons. Photons only react with electrons, not nuclei, so if element X is exposed to them, it will still be element X afterwards, with its atomic number and mass unchanged.
  • Damn, that has to be the largest chunk of Cobalt-60 on the planet. Is it me, or has the quality of proofreading gone completely out the window these days?

  • Cobalt 60's properties (Score:3, Informative)

    by Robotbeat ( 461248 ) on Monday December 19, 2005 @11:54PM (#14296631) Journal
    Cobalt 60 decays via Beta (electron) emission (and also emits an anti-neutrino), and has a half-life of 5.2714 years. Of course, electrons don't go far in air and are easily shielded, but Co60 emits gamma-rays (like very "blue" X-Rays) with an energy of 1.33 and 1.17 MeV (MeV= the energy it takes to move an electron from a long ways away to a potential of 1 million volts). Co60 is commonly used in industry for sterilizing and for killing off bacteria on food (it is also used in gamma-ray photography industrially). Cobalt 60 can be produced from bombarding iron with nuclear radiation, like inside a nuclear reactor or near a nuclear explosion.
    Wikipedia article about Cobalt [wikipedia.org]
  • Perhaps the Robots need to help Slashdot's Authors out. Radation causes brain damage, and I think the robot needs to go into the Slashdot bunker. Crawl over all the Anime Porn, and rescue the authors.

    Though, on a positive point, this is the first dupe in a week or two.

  • I'm unsure why it took 2 days to decide to unscrew a panel and 2 attempts to decide that plastic screwdrivers don't work worth poo. Or why they have a "1950's document delivery system" transporting extremely dangerous items. The real heroes of the story: the metal screwdriver and the rope used to haul the broken robot out.




    NeverEndingBillboard.com [neverendingbillboard.com]
  • Sounds almost like the episode in Star Wars one when R2D2 fixed the shield generator. I hope the hero robot gets the same royal treatment like R2D2. Robots love a good polishing job (and they hate to be naked).
  • A slashbot that stopped radioactive dupes would be great.

    (Note, if someone has already made this comment, and therefore, my comment is a dupe, the robot could have prevented that too... Maybe a robot mod?)

    (I think I am going to end up in Troll hell for this one. Ah well, been over 5 years since I have had a comment at -1...)

  • In Soviet Russia robot sends YOU in. (Score:5, Informative)

    by AHuxley ( 892839 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @12:23AM (#14296757) Journal
    Mayak, where the Soviet Union pumped out tens of tons of plutonium for nuclear weapons. Some info on how the Soviets fixed the 'it got stuck' problems - no fancy robots for them. http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=so9 9larin [thebulletin.org] "A complete repair would have taken at least 12 months..." ""That meant that the irradiated uranium fuel had to be pulled up by hand into the central hall of the reactor and placed in a special storage area. Then, when the repair was finished, the elements had to be loaded back into the reactor. Over time, we unloaded and reloaded 39,000 fuel elements. All of the plant's personnel took part in this work and they received huge doses of radiation. The repairs were finished in two months." "several hundred kilograms of freshly irradiated nuclear fuel got stuck--men from everywhere in the plant were called out, and one after another they used long steel rods to push the elements into the apparatus. The only protection they had was cotton overalls and gloves."
  • Unfortunately the robot failed anyway, with only 5 minutes left until the radiation leaked out, destroying civilisation in an evil terrorist plot. Bruce Willis had to throw himself into the chamber and heroically sacrifice his life in order to correct the problem manually. After fixing the radiation leak, he managed to crawl into and activate an experimental cryogenic chamber stored in the same room, before expiring from the overdose of radiation. The probability of him being revived for a sequel is high.
    • > Bruce Willis had to throw himself into the chamber and heroically sacrifice his life in order to correct the problem manually. After fixing the radiation leak, he managed to crawl into and activate an experimental cryogenic chamber stored in the same room, before expiring from the overdose of radiation. The probability of him being revived for a sequel is high.

      I thought that was a Star Trek episode.

      No, wait - an Andromeda episode.

      Or maybe an SG-1 episode.

      Or was it an Angel episode? Or maybe Buffy.

      It's
    • Bruce Willis NEVER dies in his movies... unless he is costaring with Brad Pitt, in which case it was a mercy killing.
  • The number of repetative posts on slashdot in the last few weeks really is impressive. This 'story' ran just a few days ago and got thoroughly torn to bits. How many times must we beat the dead horse?

    • The number of repetative posts on slashdot in the last few weeks really is impressive.

      You must be new here

      We used to complain about multiple dupes on the front page every day. Literally the same story two or three times in a row.

      Sometimes the editors bring back 'old' stories because they think there is more discussion to be had... sometimes they're just fucking up.

      I still don't understand why there is no mechanism for even a basic keyword comparison that can pop up and tell the eds "a story with similar w

  • damn that corrosive radiation (Score:4, Insightful)

    by drakewyrm ( 573759 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @01:53AM (#14296962) Homepage Journal
    "...before the radiation was able to eat its way free." That's choice. Sounds like the tagline from some poorly-researched sci-fi or action flick. Besides, the radiation was already present outside the canister; otherwise, there would have been no danger to personnel and no radiation alarms sounding.

    As for the comment about the container being filled with radiation, I could excuse that as simply a mistake of terminology. You can fill the container with active or contaminated material, but you can't fill it with radiation itself. Contamination is the shit. Radiation is just the stink.

    A more practical analogy would be light as an example of radiation. You can fill a box with flashlights, and you can shine light inside a box, but you can't fill the box with light.

    The article makes reference to the radiation eating away at the robot's circuits. This is pure speculation, but I think this may have been a reference to the effect that high energy gamma radiation can have on digital circuits such as memory. That would be a bit of a metaphor, not a literal corrosion of the circuitry. Certainly, it does not imply that the canister was in danger of impending failure.
    • High levels of radiation has a nack for breaking down many materials very quickly. Plastics and organic compounds seem to suffer the most, as the insulation on wiring turns brittle and flaky quite fast at about 1k rem. Working at a CANDU nuclear power plant, everything but the video cameras that monitor the reactor face uses special wires to prevent common short circuits. So you can tell from that that we replace the video cams quite often. Or worse (and usually the case), they stop working and we don't

  • A plucky little expensive robot was destroyed while saving the day recently at the White Sands missile range after gross incompetence in the fields of engineering and risk analysis manifested as a lump of highly radioactive substance becoming stuck in a tube, prompting technicians to attempt to fix the problem basically by kicking it really hard, which broke it even worse, at which point several people valiantly tried to fix the problem with a tool that was not designed for that purpose--since nobody had a

  • Why couldn't they have used sneakernet like everyone else?
  • It is impossible for a tube to be filled with "radiation". Radiation would be emitted spherically in all directions from the tube, subject to the inverse square law. That is, unless one was far enough away from the tube for it to be considered a point source. What the tube was filled with is "contamination", which is the source of the radiation. Contamination is the "sh*t"...radiation is the "stink".

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