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Comment by mercurysmessage | Hacker News Reader

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mercurysmessage·

I was going to say, I thought computers can't normally operate in those conditions

> Because of the high radioactivity levels inside the reactor, only specially designed robots can probe the unit

There must be some sort of really powerful shielding on the robot. Cool stuff.

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Edit - Dragon blog post describes "software radiation mitigation" better than I can: http://aviationweek.com/blog/dragons-radiation-tolerant-desi...

Radioactive shielding is just a bunch of heavy metal. The robot probably has terrible maneuverability and even worse battery life :p

The problem with the "heavy metal" approach is also secondary radiation. Sure, you've protected your package (robot, whatever) from the beta and alpha, but now your metal is re-radiating in the gamma spectrum and practically cooking your goose.

Shielding is hard.

We've seen pictures of the melted core of Chernobyl too (the "Elephant's Foot") havent' we?

Yes, and here is an article and a pretty scary shot from the Elephants foot.

http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/the-elephant-foot-of-the-che...

I couldn't find if robots were used here, but I'm sure more were later.

Your link says

> From a safe distance, workers – or “liquidators” as they were called – rigged up a crude wheeled camera contraption and pushed it towards the Elephant’s Foot

How do you think those photos were taken?

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KxRuWaD0sXg/U7MHoNyBuiI/AAAAAAAAJ...

oops - I was sure they sent a robot to do that. Never mind.

They used makeshift robots when photographing elephant's foot. Unfortunately for the worker in the picture, they didn't use it then.

Humans, not robots, take the shot

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