[JonoW]

Does anyone know how they extract the molten fuel? Sounds like they will use more robots, but if it's taken this long just to get a robot to see the target, how on earth does a robot retrieve this stuff? Must be a career defining experience for these robotists, doing something that can really help an awful situation

[nielsbot]

That's basically what they say at the end of the article:

“I’ve been a robotic engineer for 30 years, and we’ve never faced anything as hard as this,” said Shinji Kawatsuma, director of research and development at the center. “This is a divine mission for Japan’s robot engineers.”

[themodelplumber]

> This is a divine mission for Japan’s robot engineers

That is so cool. I'd love to see some kind of "lessons learned" summary from the robotics people.

[nihonde]

I saw a good documentary on NHK about the effort to enlist high schoolers and college students who might be able to think outside the box regarding this mission. My impression is that, no matter what happens in Fukushima, Japan is going to have a deep bench of robotics engineers in the coming decades.

[justinjlynn]

Unfortunately, I'd imagine the vast majority of the helpful information learned will be kept a proprietary secret.

[adrianN]

I could imagine that shielding electronics from radiation could fall under military secret.

[justinjlynn]

These days, once you get to the level where you can afford to develop them in the first place, there really isn't that much of a difference.

[nielsbot]

Is that all that secret though? Can't you buy radiation-hardened versions of chips if you want to?

[an_account]

The article says they’ve built a $100 million research center for the purpose of building radiation hardened robots for this environment.

I’m sure as they learn techniques and technology for building these robots it will progress quicker. A small robot with a camera is the first step.

[tigershark]

They don't have the slightest idea. It's an absolute miracle that they just managed to get a picture of the molten core after 6 years. Now probably they can start to think what to do, but my guess is that they don't have any idea at the moment.