Egg robots for nuclear reactors

A spherical robot equipped with a camera may soon navigate underground the pipes of a nuclear reactor by propelling itself with an internal network of valves and pumps, according to a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) release.

Harry Asada, the Ford Professor of Engineering in the department of mechanical engineering and director, MIT’s d'Arbeloff Laboratory for Information Systems and Technology says 52 of the 104 nuclear reactors in the US are more than 30 years old and “need immediate solutions to assure the safe operations of these reactors”.

Asada says one of the major challenges for safety inspectors is identifying corrosion in a reactor's underground pipes. Currently, plant inspectors use indirect methods to monitor buried piping: Generating a voltage gradient to identify areas where pipe coatings may have corroded, and using ultrasonic waves to screen lengths of pipe for cracks. The only direct monitoring requires digging out the pipes and visually inspecting these—a costly and time-intensive operation.