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- Title: UNITED KINGDOM: UK drone offered for Fukushima clean-up
- Date: 28th January 2014
- Summary: BRISTOL, ENGLAND, UK (RECENT) (REUTERS) DRONE IN SKY TEAM MEMBER WITH DRONE FLYING IN FOREGROUND PAYTON MONITORING LAPTOP HEXI MARK II
- Embargoed: 12th February 2014 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Japan, United Kingdom
- City:
- Country: United Kingdom
- Topics: Science / Technology
- Reuters ID: LVACZ64TEAN669CJRDEQLPXRSRAI
- Story Text: The creators of the Advanced Airborne Radiation Monitoring (AARM) system say their low-cost, semi-autonomous, drone could be deployed in nuclear disaster zones like Fukushima to help monitor radioactive fallout. It's been nearly three years since a devastating tsunami crippled the Japanese city's power plant.
The researchers say it could be used as an alternative to manned flights, such as those used by the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) during the early period after the Fukushima power plant incident to monitor radiation levels.
Fitted with on-board microcomputers and sensors, Dr Oliver Payton and Dr James MacFarlane, and Principal Investigator Tom Scott, say it is a cheaper and safer alternative to using manned helicopters when monitoring major radiation leaks. The trio of researchers, from the University of Bristol, say AARM can provide visual, thermal and radiation monitoring without exposing rescuers to radioactivity.
"At the time we were working on very lightweight radiation detectors and we were then looking at the reports coming out of Fukushima and we were very surprised that they were using big large helicopters for surveying radiation and these were piloted by human crews and you're putting people in risk and we thought, 'well, there has to be a better way,'" said MacFarlane.
In the hours and days following the event, specialists aboard helicopters monitored conditions around the site at the risk of significant radiation exposure to both crew members and the helicopters themselves.
"The kind of status quo is to send in a manned helicopter with a crew of about three people," said Payton. "If there's large amounts of radiation you're putting the lives of those pilots and co-pilots at risk. You're also putting at risk the helicopter as well - a helicopter is worth considerably more than a cheap unmanned vehicle such as this one. So the status quo is that if that helicopter comes back it's contaminated, it can never be used again. If this comes back it's basically a disposable piece of kit."
Payton says their current "disposable piece of kit" - the Hexi Mark II drone - contains a number of hi-tech tools. "She's built using full carbon fibre with much more powerful motors. She'll fly for much longer, fly for about 25 minutes in the air, and this is all using custom electronics that we've put together, as well as (an) Arduino-based micro controller system which talks to all of the sensors, collects the data, and sends that back to a user remotely," he said.
On-board radiation sensors and gamma spectrometers are used to record ground-based radiological contamination, transmitting data in real time to the operator. Visual and thermal cameras also provide real-time information on radiation levels.
In addition to safety and cost considerations, MacFarlane says the AARM has other advantages, such as the ability to get close to the potential source of radiation.
"With our system you can pilot it from a remote location, so you don't put your operator at risk, but it also flies at very low altitude and this gives you very good spatial resolution of your data, so it tells you where the radiation is on the ground. So it gives you sub-metre scale resolution," said MacFarlane.
The team successfully tested the vehicle for six months in various weather conditions at radioactively contaminated sites in south-west Romania.
"We've shown and demonstrated that we can map out radiation over areas of about a kilometre so far, it's still under testing. But we can also map out not just how much radiation there is but also what type of radiation it is, so we can get back the energies of the gamma rays and that gives us back a fingerprint, as it were, for the elements that are being detected. So we can say, 'yes, that's uranium, yes, that's plutonium' or 'yes, that's just natural radiation that's freely available in the environment," said Payton.
The Fukushima Daiichi power plant disaster occurred in March 2011, after the city was struck by a magnitude nine earthquake and tsunami. The ensuing hydrogen explosion from the incident sparked the release of radioactive material, contaminating a large area of land.
The team are also working to develop UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) mapping and exploration algorithms for projects relating to the detection of buried explosives and depleted uranium ordinance.
The AARM system was jointly funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and Sellafield Ltd. The University of Bristol is working with the UK's National Nuclear Laboratory to offer AARM as a tool for assisting with environmental surveying during the ongoing Fukushima clean-up operations. Scott is currently in Japan to work on planning a collaborative mission with University of Kyoto scientists. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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