New ideas are essential for developing robots capable of surviving the devastating conditions of the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, according to the plant’s head of decommissioning.
The announcement follows a number of major robot fails among the group of remotely-controlled bots exploring and monitoring the site.
READ MORE: Bad news for bots: Fukushima cleanup robots overpowered by radiation (VIDEOS)
Naohiro Masuda, president of Fukushima Daiichi Decommissioning, said Thursday that more creativity is needed to produce robots that can find and assess the condition of melted fuel rods in the high-level radiation site, reported Japan Today.
“We should think out of the box so we can examine the bottom of the core and how melted fuel debris spread out,” Masuda said.
Last month a clean-up mission at No.2 reactor had to be aborted after extremely high radiation caused the robot to break down. Two similar missions were dropped earlier after one robot got stuck in a gap and another was abandoned after finding no fuel during a six day search.
READ MORE: Extremely high radiation breaks down Fukushima clean-up robot at damaged nuclear reactor
Even specially-designed aquatic robots probing the depths beneath the power plant have malfunctioned as a result of the radioactive substance inside the reactor.
