Are the man in charge reading my blog?
On the 7th of April in post title Fukushima – Is the truth being diluted in sea water too? I signed off writing: “I am surprised though, that in such technologically advanced country like Japan, remotely operated robots are not deployed to boldly go where radiation may be to high for humans to bear. Or maybe they do and we just don’t hear about it.”
Few days later and a US remote controlled helicopter was used to probe the nuclear plant on a mission to collect information on the buildings at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi 4 nuclear reactors.
On April 10, 2011, a 17-pound ‘T-Hawk’ developed by Honeywell was deployed for the task. It can fly to 10,000 feet in windy conditions, with a top speed of 46 mph for up to of 56 minutes at a time. It can be pre programmed or operated by remote control. Watch the video for more information.
Another 3 unmanned helicopters were shipped to Japan from France. According to UAS Vision website the “Company founder Laurent Grenier will be on hand to personally adjust and supervise the flights. He’ll be taking two electric and one petrol engine aircraft. Each is capable of up to one hour flight time with a range of 30 kilometres on autopilot.
The helicopters are all equipped with radiation sensors, infra-red thermometers and cameras. The largest, the HE300 model has a large-load carrying capacity of greater than 20 kg. It was designed to run specific kinds of missions, including those requiring items such as a photographic camera, a cooled thermal camera, various types of sensors for measuring and/or surveying work.”
“The CBIRF brought a remotely controlled robot and analyzer equipment to deal with the nuclear crisis” at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant. I am not sure ‘remotely controlled robot and analyzer equipment’ referred to is what we see in the video.
Now the next question on my mind is the obvious one: What took them so long and why?
