I wonder what they do once the robot sees the uranium? I mean the robot itself is now heavily contaminated. Do they just leave the robot down there? Or do they somehow decontaminate it so they can use it again?
> I wonder what they do once the robot sees the uranium? I mean the robot itself is now heavily contaminated.
Contamination isn't as dramatic as you'd think, it's mostly superficial : you have radioactive dust sticking on the robot, and you "just" need to wash it thoroughly to remove the contamination.
People usually have a wrong vision of radioactive contamination : they think being exposed to radiations makes you radioactive in return. In fact, it doesn't : being exposed to a radioactive material (which means you get struck by gamma rays, alpha and/or beta particles) doesn't make you radioactive. You can get contaminated with radioactive dust (which is a real problem if you ingest or inhale it, since it's hard to wash there) but you don't become radioactive yourself.
The mistake didn't appear out of nowhere though : things exposed to neutrons becomes radioactive (they become activated) and neutrons are emitted by nuclear fission, which occur in a exploding atomic bomb or a working nuclear plant. But when the plant shuts down, the chain reaction stops and so does the neutron emission. All that remain is radioactivity, as fission products keep decaying.
That being said, in practice I'm not sure the electronics in the robot is in a good enough shape to be used again …
That's the primary reason it's taken so long, as far as I understand. It's not that it was hard to find the location, per se, but that the robots didn't last long enough.
Contamination isn't as dramatic as you'd think, it's mostly superficial : you have radioactive dust sticking on the robot, and you "just" need to wash it thoroughly to remove the contamination.
People usually have a wrong vision of radioactive contamination : they think being exposed to radiations makes you radioactive in return. In fact, it doesn't : being exposed to a radioactive material (which means you get struck by gamma rays, alpha and/or beta particles) doesn't make you radioactive. You can get contaminated with radioactive dust (which is a real problem if you ingest or inhale it, since it's hard to wash there) but you don't become radioactive yourself.
The mistake didn't appear out of nowhere though : things exposed to neutrons becomes radioactive (they become activated) and neutrons are emitted by nuclear fission, which occur in a exploding atomic bomb or a working nuclear plant. But when the plant shuts down, the chain reaction stops and so does the neutron emission. All that remain is radioactivity, as fission products keep decaying.
That being said, in practice I'm not sure the electronics in the robot is in a good enough shape to be used again …