ROBOT WILL INSPECT THE DAMAGED CORE OF THE FUKUSHIMA POWER PLANT, JAPAN

obotics specialist company Jacobs has designed and built a robotic tool which will inspect the damaged nuclear power reactor at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan. The remotely operated device will harvest debris from the reactor containment vessel which was damaged after a meltdown caused by the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.

Designed by Jacobs’ engineers in the UK, the robotic tool had to meet more than 300 functional, operational, performance and geometric requirements. It also had to be small enough to enter the damaged containment vessel and pick up sand and pebbles up to 10 mm in size with a bucket-type retrieval device.