popularmechanics.com — Much like the fictional cleaning robot currently packing movie theaters, robots are being used to clean humanity’s worst messes. At Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State, where plutonium for Cold War nukes was made, robots are on the front line of the cleanup effort. Exposure to the material would kill a human within moments.
Jul 1, 2008 View in Crawl 4
mecharabbitJul 2, 2008
And he may have an anal fetish. Look at the size of the hose in its rear end!
homieasJul 2, 2008
On a mac...alt + 8. Wall•EPC I think is alt+7
omnithoughtJul 2, 2008
Why is it that ever since this movie came out, every f**king robot is suddenly a WALL*E?
glassagateJul 2, 2008
My entire crew have lost their jobs, cleaning up nuclear waste,because of robots. They say "it's unhealthy, and probably deadly."They say "it's not normal to have tentacles," "it's not healthy to havetumors that speak perfect French to you." What am I going to do for work now!?
mokaoneJul 2, 2008
Real Wall-E ?<a class="user" href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=As7UQtKX00c">http://youtube.com/watch?v=As7UQtKX00c</a>
mcnapeJul 2, 2008
I did my senior project with CH2M Hill, redesigning the FoldTrack MRT (mobile retrieval tool - technically it's not a robot). They wanted it to be slightly smaller in cross-section, because it's kind of a tight squeeze putting it down the riser pipe. I managed to get it from 11.5 to 11 inches in diameter.Unfortunately, the original FT MRT is down in the waste tanks right now doing nothing - one of its treads came off on June 4, and since then it has been just 'squirming' around trying to do its best to clean up the rest of that tank. My boss, who developed the FT MRT on the CH2M Hill side, nicknamed it the 'Crab-Track,' because they're using the open/close function to make it move sideways. On sunday, though, it sprung a hydraulic leak, and my boss thinks that it was on the exposed gear that used to have a tread covering it. Although there have been some major issues with the current FT MRT, future versions do hold the potential to clean 100% of the waste out of a tank, which was previously thought impossible. That is great news, as the SST's (Single Shell Tanks) are quite leaky, and may eventually contaminate the Columbia River which flows nearby.I hope I don't go to jail for disclosing any classified information...
bullzandbearzJul 2, 2008
do they get overtime for that job? :)
pdxphoenixJul 2, 2008
You might not say that if you knew how much _has_ leaked from the single-wall tanks at Hanford; which is why they're spending billions demolishing the buildings, & transfering the waste to double-wall tanks to await a glassification process in a plant they have yet to complete in 2011 or maybe by 2017 or maybe by...
jsilver123Jul 2, 2008
very interesting!
Closed AccountJul 2, 2008
We better watch out, robots might take over the world one day.