Five years after the devastating tsunami and the destruction and meltdown of the nuclear power plants at Fukushima, Japan, the radiation levels are so high and so extreme that nothing can survive in the area for long. This, apparently, included the specially designed and built robots being used for the recovery efforts. The radiation levels remain so extreme that many of the robots are dying before they can even get in to do their jobs.
It was one of the most formidable earthquakes ever recorded and it caused a tsunami over 30 feet high to crash into the Japanese east coast killing nearly 20,000 with another 160,000 being left jobless and homeless. Since then, Japanese authorities have been trying to finish an underground “ice wall” in an effort to stop the contamination of the area’s ground water. When done, it will be the largest ice wall on Earth. In addition, no one knows what to do with all of the giant tanks of radioactive water that are everywhere at Fukushima.
The radiation is still so deadly after five years that workers don’t dare try and get into the subterranean levels to try and remove the melted down fuel rods of the reactors. Currently, there are over one hundred different types of robots being used int he recovery efforts. They are in all shapes and sizes and can, for the most part, go anywhere. certainly anywhere a human would dare not tread.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has been i charge of the clean up operations and the ones that have developed the robots. For TEPCO, it takes about two years to design and build a specific robot but it seems to no avail as many of the robots are killed when they get so far into the disaster area. The radiation is so powerful that it is destroying all of the wiring and electrical functions in the robots. the robots are being built by Hitachi, Toshiba, iRobot, and Mitsubishi.
An army of about 8,000 human workers continue to pump water into the sites to try and stabilize the radiation but the contaminated water keeps building up in the countless storage tanks at the site. the deaths of the robots are a major factor in the estimates that it will take probably 40 more years and $15 billion to finally clean up the disaster.
PHOTO SOURCES: Telegraph.co.uk, Newsweek, US News, Freeopinionist.com