▶ Date: 2022.03.10(THU) 

▶ Time: 4:30pm ~ 5:30pm 

▶ Speaker: Prof. Hanwool Woo (The University of Tokyo)

▶ Title: Utilization of Robot Technology for Fukushima Decommissioning

▶ Abstract:

The earthquake which happened in Japan almost 10 years ago and the resulting tsunami, caused one of the biggest nuclear disaster in the world at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear power plant. There are four units in Fukushima, the accident caused meltdown (Unit 1, 2, and 3) and hydrogen explosion (Unit 1, 3, and 4), and consequent leakage of radiation.

After 10 years, the removal of fuel assembly has been completed only in Unit 4, but some of the tasks planned to be accomplished within 10 years have not been successfully due to the extreme conditions and radiations. Hence, innovative technologies able to efficiently explore part of the reactors, which are completely inaccessible to humans are still missing and highly desirable.

In this lecture, our approaches using robotics technologies for the exploration of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear power plant will be introduced.

Our research group is planning to construct a monitoring platform for understanding the status inside a reactor during fuel debris removal.

In addition, we are developing a robotic manipulator for efficient exploration and decommissioning.