fukushima

Honda's humanoid robot Asimo can now run faster, hop around, autonomously avoid people, and communicate in sign language with its new hands.

In the first major update to the droid in four years, Asimo has improved AI skills, being able to operate continuously without human control, and also has better locomotion, and a remarkable 57 axes of movement.

It's another step in the multimillion dollar, decades-old effort to make Asimo, first unveiled 12 years ago, useful. It also follows criticism of Japan's robotics community for a limp response to the Fukushima nuclear crisis. … Read more

MAKUHARI, Japan--For many Japanese, food safety is an urgent concern in light of the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, from which radiation has entered the food supply.

Kyoto-based scientific equipment maker Horiba is trying to help with a radiation detector kit that can tell users if their food is contaminated.

It's basically a transparent bucket with a radiation monitor in the bottom and an upper compartment that holds rice and other foods. It also works with soil.

The bucket works with Horiba's new PA-1000 Radi monitor, which was being shown off here at Ceatec trade show outside Tokyo ahead of its release this month.

Priced at 125,000 yen ($1,628), the Radi can detect radiation ranging from 0.001 to 9.999 microsieverts per hour and has a buzzer option for alerts.

Horiba staff members said Japan residents are now looking for higher quality detectors instead of cheaper imports. The company's PA-1100 Radi is a monitor with USB and Bluetooth for links to PCs, smartphones, and tablets. It can be used with GPS applications to quickly create radiation maps. … Read more

Workers struggling to contain the leaking Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan have only a few robots that are able to get deep inside the highly radioactive reactor buildings and piloting them has been very difficult, according to a blog written by one of the workers and republished by IEEE Spectrum.

The postings, written by an author who goes by the initials S.H., began appearing after the March 11 quake and tsunamis that knocked out the plant and ran through July. Many of them detail training sessions, as seen in the associated video compilation below. The blog was deleted last month when word of it spread in Japan, but it has also appeared on the site of AIST, a government-backed research center.

Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) hired contractors, including S.H.'s employer, to help bring the plant to a cold shutdown in January, but the postings paint a picture of an inadequately equipped robot response to the catastrophe. Observers, including your humble correspondent, have wondered why robot-mad Japan wasn't prepared for a major nuclear accident like Fukushima. … Read more

Japan's struggle to contain a nuclear power plant crippled in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami has had another setback as record-high radiation levels at the site have been detected.

Radiation levels at least 5 sieverts per hour were detected on the second floor of the No. 1 reactor building at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, the highest detected indoors at the plant since the quake and tsunami, operator Tokyo Electric Power Company said this week.

The previous highest dose detected indoors there was 4 sieverts per hour in the No. 1 reactor building.

The beleaguered utility … Read more

Japan today marked four months since the March 11 earthquake and tsunamis that left more than 20,000 dead and missing, with nuclear officials predicting it will take decades to dismantle the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Removal of melted nuclear fuel at the plant won't begin until 2021; the fuel is apparently now in a solidified state and presents extremely difficult technical challenges. Full dismantling, including demolishing the reactors, will take decades more and will only happen after radiation levels fall, Japanese media reported, quoting a draft report on the cleanup.

Compiled by operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, and the Japan Atomic Energy Commission, the draft based the estimate on the aftermath of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania.

The Fukushima crisis is much more severe, and forced the evacuation of 80,000 people. In early June, Japanese nuclear officials doubled their estimate of the radiation released after March 11. The reevaluation followed the government's ranking of the event on par with the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe.

Workers at the plant are still trying to bring the critical situation under control by January 2012. Decontaminated water is being used to cool the reactors ahead of efforts to achieve a cold shutdown. … Read more

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said today that renewable energy will be a key pillar of Japan's energy policy after the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years and that its nuclear policy must be reviewed from scratch.

The massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11 knocked out cooling systems at the Fukushima plant in northeast Japan, and the prolonged crisis could hamper Japan's efforts to reduce its use of fossil fuels. The plant is still leaking radiation.

"The current basic energy policy envisages that over 50 percent of total electricity supply will come from nuclear power … Read more

It was only a matter of time until we had a decent app to track radiation from Fukushima.

Almost from the moment problems started at the Japanese nuclear power plant, the crowd was in on the action. At first it was just Webcams trained on geiger counters somewhere in Tokyo with the continuous image fed to UStream.

Then some dude from Portland got on Kickstarter and raised more than 35 grand to send more geiger counters to the country and aggregate their readings online with measurements from governments, nonprofits, and the crowd.

That last project also integrates with something called Pachube, an impressive global and crowdsourced platform for sharing real-time environmental and energy data. London-based Pachube also offers up an API and other tools for tinkerers and developers like Japan's Seigo Ishino, who created "Wind From Fukushima."

The free Android app is basically a mashup of radiation sensor readings, Google Maps, and wind data from across Japan--the result is a real-time display of not only where the radiation is right now, but also which way it's heading.… Read more

A new open and crowdsourced initiative to deploy more geiger counters all over Japan looks to be a go. Safecast, formerly RDTN.org, recently met and exceeded its $33,000 fund-raising goal on Kickstarter, which should help Safecast send between 100 and 600 geiger counters to the catastrophe-struck country.

The data captured from the geiger counters will be fed into Safecast.org, which aggregates radiation readings from government, nonprofit, and other sources, as well as into Pachube, a global open-source network of sensors. Safecast is one of the larger crowdsourced monitoring efforts, not unlike a similar effort in the United States that predated the Japanese disaster.… Read more

TOKYO--Japan's robotics response to the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has been disappointing so far, but a 5-ton rescue robot developed after the 1995 Kobe earthquake may see some action at the facility soon.

Created by Fukuoka-based Tmsuk in 2007, the T-53 Enryu (PDF) is a hulking, 9-foot-tall machine on treads with a bulldozer attachment and giant arms to move debris.

Enryu (or "Rescue Dragon") is expected to clear highly radioactive rubble at the plant to provide machines and people better access, but it may need to be shielded with lead to protect it from … Read more