Robots used at Chernobyl and a very good film using actual footage of the site.

[Fraser]

I was researching robots that have been used in challenging environments and came across those that had been deployed in the Chernobyl clean-up operations.

I am interested in remote rovers used on the moon and saw a comment on a Wiki stating that the designers of a 1970's Russian Lunikhod Moon Rover had been brought out of retirement to quickly design and produce a vehicle that could help clean up the Chernobyl site. The Original Moon Rover design was modified and a robot built. It was named the STR-1. Its heritage is obvious. I attach pictures... you will see what I mean.

I have worked with Ionising radiation for much of my career so I was interested in how the robots performed. In short, they didn't. All were defeated by the conditions at Chernobyl. Humans had to do the work......that still sends shivers down my spine.

I stumbled upon an excellent short documentary that uses real footage of the robots and clean up works. The narration comes from a man who was working on the site.

Well worth watching. It is a very powerful video. I learned just how awful the conditions on the ground really were for the robots and workers. Please watch it, the brave people who gave their lives deserve to be recognised, and it teaches us techs a thing or two about machinery Vs flesh and bone, its effectiveness and its weaknesses.



Also of interest are the machinery and robot graveyards



and the Robot Museum at Chernobyl

http://io9.com/a-museum-of-robotic-equipment-used-during-the-chernobyl-512831778

http://englishrussia.com/2013/06/11/exposition-of-the-robotized-equipment-in-chernobyl/

Admission that robots could not handle the radiation and conditions at Chernobyl:

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/10861/title/Soviet-Official-Admits-That-Robots-Couldn-t-Handle-Chernobyl-Cleanup/


As the documentary says, the Chernobyl accident has drifted into the mists of time and the brave who gave their lives have often been forgotten. I have no issue with Russia or its people but I do wonder how the West would have dealt with such a disaster. Would we have sent people to their almost certain deaths ? Radiation poisoning is not a pleasant death.

I listened to the words of the Officer telling his soldiers that its was 'OK and clear' for work, when he knew this was not so, and it made me shiver.The narrator does not show any criticism of him however. He was as much a victim of the situation as the poor young soldiers he commanded. What else could he say to calm their nerves ? Poor sods.

I was appalled to read that Government bureaucracy prevented Western Scientists providing state of the art robot technology for the clean-up. That is abuse of the international movement of technology regulations, and not what they were intended for.

I hope that the world never has to witness a radiation disaster like Chernobyl again, but if we do, I also hope that all governments who can assist, do so. And those that need help, bury their pride and ask for it.

Aurora

[SeanB]

Soviets still can make a tethered robot for clearing up, as they still have the required designers who can make the magamps, tube based equipment and the other rad hard stuff. Biggest issue is the wimpy silicon devices that fail, a magamp will work till it arcs over, and tubes as well. You will need a tether and a lot of power, but that tech is easy, though the trailing cables will be a problem for smaller units.

[nctnico]

You can put batteries on a vehicle and even with tubes it isn't impossible to make a remote controlled vehicle.

[Fraser]

But with respect guys, this is what I was investigating....the Russians had a massive incentive to create such Robots, yet they failed, as did the units from other countries. It turned out that the combination of massive radiation levels, the need for decontamination of the robot with high pressure sprays, and the challenging terrain, all took their toll and they failed quickly.

I know Russian ingenuity well from having lived there. If anyone could pull together an 'agricultural' technology robot, or one that had hardened control systems, I would expect it to be them. Most Russian engineers that I worked along side were very clever, resourceful, and believed in the KISS principle to ensure ease of maintenance. Russian designers have a extraordinary command of basic physics and how it may be used to meet their goals. It somehow just didn't work for them in Chernobyl's challenging conditions 

I noted that the Russians also tried importing technology, but it is pretty obvious that the buyers had no clue what they were doing. Wrong (too low) radiation level specs, machines originally designed to work on the sea bed and machines that were far too reliant on technology for control and operation. Much was learnt from the Chernobyl incident. None of our modern clever EOD robots or larger remote controlled 'Rovers' would have coped with the radiation levels present in this scenario. I hope this has been noted and some  more robust units are available for such decontamination and clean-up work these days.

Aurora

[ez24]

Thanks Aurora

I enjoyed the post

[G7PSK]

I think the main problem was the time that was available to source and or create robots for the clear up. Put it bluntly there was no time, the mess had to be cleaned up ASAP before much more radioactive muck got loose.
The only equipment that was going to work in such conditions would be entirely hydraulic and pneumatic on tethers, large powers and robustness is required.
One thought occurs to me drill a shaft underneath the reactor install a small atomic bomb such that the whole lot falls into the resulting hole and gets covered over, obviously the blast must not break through the surface but that has been done before in underground tests. It just needs to be such that the ground left cant support the weight of the structure above and caves in.

[Rerouter]

At the time i doubt anyone was thinking, lets set an atomic bomb off under our failed reactor

[G7PSK]

If the devise was deep enough there is very little surface disturbance,The trick would be getting it just right. Other means of undermining could be used including conventional tunnelling, but the faster such a site is buried the better. I think that all future reactors should be built inside mountains so that when they are finished with the whole lot can be sealed up for the next billion years while the mountain erodes away.

[mikron]

Vladimir Shevchenko, director of the film, ''Chernobyl: A Chronicle of Difficult Weeks,'' died one year later from an excessive dose of radiation.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/30/world/a-soviet-film-maker-at-chernobyl-in-86-is-dead-of-radiation.html

[Fraser]

There were some very brave people working at the Chernobyl site after the accident. As stated in the short film, some did not wear their dosimeters to avoid being taken off of the job. They did not want  their replacements to suffer their likely fate. Very brave indeed.

Aurora

[mikron]

The long and saddening list of fatalities can be found on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster

[VK5RC]

I believe many have died also from radiophobia, after suffering some radiation exposure resultant depression and alcoholism has killed many, perhaps even more than the radiation itself.

As Japanese health and radiation specialist Shunichi Yamashita noted.

"We know from Chernobyl that the psychological consequences are enormous. Life expectancy of the evacuees dropped from 65 to 58 years -- not [predominately] because of cancer, but because of depression, alcoholism and suicide. Relocation is not easy, the stress is very big. We must not only track those problems, but also treat them. Otherwise people will feel they are just guinea pigs in our research."

[daqq]

If the devise was deep enough there is very little surface disturbance,The trick would be getting it just right. Other means of undermining could be used including conventional tunnelling, but the faster such a site is buried the better. I think that all future reactors should be built inside mountains so that when they are finished with the whole lot can be sealed up for the next billion years while the mountain erodes away.

Actually, there was a tunnel built under the reactor with the intent of installing a cooling device so that the molten core would not seep through and contaminate ground waters.

[VK3DRB]

The real danger is how the ex-Soviet knuckle heads will handle the leakage from the Chernobyl sarcophagus in a couple of thousand years when no one will be able to read their warning messages. There is NO technology that can remove the danger and the radiation is accelerating the decay of concrete. Unless there is new technology found to clean up this fiasco even with within a few hundred years, Europe may well become uninhabitable.

Also consider populations moving into the area when no-one can read. Thanks to the digital storage age, there might not be many records around in 2,000 years to say how toxic the region has become and why.

[daqq]

The real danger is how the ex-Soviet knuckle heads will handle the leakage from the Chernobyl sarcophagus in a couple of thousand years when no one will be able to read their warning messages. There is NO technology that can remove the danger and the radiation is accelerating the decay of concrete. Unless there is new technology found to clean up this Soviet fiasco even with within a few hundred years, Europe may well become uninhabitable.

By that time the most of the nasty will have decayed on its own.

[rolycat]

The real danger is how the ex-Soviet knuckle heads will handle the leakage from the Chernobyl sarcophagus in a couple of thousand years when no one will be able to read their warning messages. There is NO technology that can remove the danger and the radiation is accelerating the decay of concrete. Unless there is new technology found to clean up this fiasco even with within a few hundred years, Europe may well become uninhabitable.

Hyperbole much?

A new multinationally funded confinement structure is nearing completion, and is to be used as a framework for demolition of the old sarcophagus and eventually the reactor itself.

Even if the sarcophagus collapses before the new enclosure is complete, serious contamination would mostly be confined to the exclusion zone.

[nctnico]

The real danger is how the ex-Soviet knuckle heads will handle the leakage from the Chernobyl sarcophagus in a couple of thousand years when no one will be able to read their warning messages. There is NO technology that can remove the danger and the radiation is accelerating the decay of concrete. Unless there is new technology found to clean up this fiasco even with within a few hundred years, Europe may well become uninhabitable.

I think you have the wrong idea on how big Europe really is (nearly 40 times bigger than New Zealand and also bigger than the United States). They are currently building a new structure around the reactor but most of the really dangerous stuff is buried deep inside the reactor under lots of lead and other materials. That won't just get blown away by the wind.

[Len]

If the devise was deep enough there is very little surface disturbance,The trick would be getting it just right.

Unfortunately, a number of underground nuclear tests have failed to get it just right and spewed varying amounts of fallout into the surroundings. This technology isn't reliable enough to be used where you don't want more contamination.

[rolycat]

If the devise was deep enough there is very little surface disturbance,The trick would be getting it just right.

Unfortunately, a number of underground nuclear tests have failed to get it just right and spewed varying amounts of fallout into the surroundings. This technology isn't reliable enough to be used where you don't want more contamination.

Very substantial amounts of fallout.

As nasty as the Chernobyl disaster was, atomic weapons testing in the fifties and sixties released between 100 and 1000 times as much radioactive material into the atmosphere. ^[*]

[Fraser]

I have just read up on the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster...... I must have been asleep the past few years on that front......I had not realised just how serious that incident truly was 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster

The incident time line is very long but an interesting read. Its last entry is January 2015.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster

Its all a bit of a mess there and TEPCO have not helped matters at all. One mistake after another.

It could so easily have been a multiple Chernobyl disaster 

I see that they have had robots working reliably inside highly contaminated environments within teh reactor buildings though. Some of the recorded levels would be lethal to humans..... with a 100% mortality rate. (even if suited in protective equipment).

It will be many years before that site can be considered sorted.

Aurora

[SeanB]

Funny enough the Chernobyl exclusion zone is a thriving wildlife preserve, going back to a primary forest quite fast, now that there is no more clearing of trees. Have a look at the videos of the zone by Bionerd, where you can see how the area is recovering with only minor spots with higher levels of radiation. Just do not eat the fish in the cooling pond, they are both toxic from heavy metal but are also rather radioactive as well. You can eat the fruit from the trees, just not the mushrooms or a lot of the meat from wild animals.

[Galenbo]

...Just do not eat the fish in the cooling pond, they are both toxic from heavy metal but are also rather radioactive as well...

There was an interesting study, showing that all animals had a normal life expectancy now, but were radioactive.
The only thing they coudn't/wouldn't measure is the number of ill/wrong-borns and how fast they die.

Everything looks normal, except human presence.

[daqq]

I see that they have had robots working reliably inside highly contaminated environments within teh reactor buildings though. Some of the recorded levels would be lethal to humans..... with a 100% mortality rate. (even if suited in protective equipment).

To be fair tech has come a little way since 1986 - what would have been impossible a few decades ago is possible (albeit pricey) now. Both for power electronics as well as logic - you can get off the shelf-ish rad hard processors, or you can build a very small control system and shield the hell out of it. Still, the robots suffer and some just give up. Also, the Soviets of the time were improvising a lot of the stuff as they went on, exploring unknown territories.

[helius]

Aurora: I view it as quite sensationalistic to portray the army conscripts being "sent to their deaths". They were working under great pressure with substandard safety equipment, and had little knowledge themselves of radiation dangers, but their exposure was limited to very brief periods, from 30 seconds to one minute before the worker was permanently discharged.

Almost all of the casualties from the Chernobyl disaster were in the first days when the reactors were still burning. The events in that film were six months later, when the situation was stabilized and the cleanup and recovery were underway. In the narration he describes area M as "your thousand röntgens", which must be a translation error as the radioactivity on the roof was many times that. More likely he meant 1,000 rem/hr, or 10 Sv/hr, which is the level of exposure that can cause death in hours, therefore highly dangerous to workers. For the conscripts, their one-minute duty could expose them to 0.16 Sv, the same total dose of radiation that the astronauts on the One Year ISS mission will experience. There are some houses that expose their occupants to a higher dose every year.

All of the deaths linked by real evidence to Chernobyl number about 80, including ~10 children who died from leukemia in the affected region. The number of deaths caused by the Fukushima disaster so far is zero. Many more people were negatively affected by depression and alcoholism brought on by fears of radiation: in the Wikipedia article linked several posts above,

It is thought that the principal long-term adverse health outcomes are anxiety and depression among the general public across Eastern Europe as a result of irresponsible reporting and exaggerated statements by anti-nuclear power activists.

The total release of carcinogens into the environment is also greater from fossil fuels than from all of the nuclear disasters. So you could say that Chernobyl (and now Fukushima) have caused greater numbers of cancers indirectly, by enabling Greenpeace to more effectively lobby against new nuclear power plants.

[senso]

Here is my take on rad-hard robotics:
They have a limited movement zone, so why dont they grab a gigantic mechanical diesel engine(no electronics to fry, just provide air and fuel and a hole for the smoke), they can even work under water), attach a pair of tankers for fuel autonomy, and an hydraulic or air pump/compressor.
The robot is moved using hidraulic/pneumatic motors, and have linear pistons for moving arms, shovels, grabbers what ever.
Throw in a couple pair of fiber optic bundles, some to pipe light in, the others to have image, it works for a endoscopy, it must work in a bit bigger scale.
Hidraulic involves having hot fluids in a closed loop system, but with air there is no need to have a closed loop for control.

I must be failing to grasp something, because I can't see any serious limitation, there are no electronics required, be it valves, germanium, silicone, GaAs or any exotic thing, plain old actuator(be they linear or rotary), the base station can be setup where there is less radiation so that it would work with either a cable or remote control.