Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

Re:Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress d... by kovek on Saturday January 26, 2019 @05:46PM (#19009050)

Imagine if we could have a reactor running in a very remote area, accessible by robots. No people would work in the area, only remotely controlled robots would be present. People would come into work in a remote office and have high-bandwidth internet access to the cameras installed on the robots. All the installations would be created with "robot-first" interfaces.

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Re:Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress d... by javagram on Saturday January 26, 2019 @05:54PM (#19009100)

Robots have not proven very successful in nuclear disasters IIRC. Radiation hardening for the computers is an issue, as are manipulators and other things.

Moreover, in a disaster situation like Fukushima, power loss would be an issue. Fukushima was fine in the immediate aftermath (24 hours?) of the disaster until the on-site batteries ran out and backup generators couldn’t start due to damage from flooding. A fully robotic installation would face similar and greater problems after a SCRAM.

It’s an interesting sci-fi idea that might be possible in a hundred years, once we master simpler robots like vacuums and folding laundry!

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Re:Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress d... by est31 on Saturday January 26, 2019 @05:50PM (#19009074)

IIRC the highly radioactive part of a nuclear power plant is already robot-only. It's pretty cool technology. But technology isn't the problem.

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