Send in the robots

I had been wondering why there wasn't much talk about why robot loving Japan did not seem to have any robots suitable for helping fight a nuclear reactor disaster.

The always interesting William Saletan at Slate comes to the rescue. It turns out that different countries have been looking at such developing such robots, but the country which has actually got a bunch of them ready for nuclear disasters is (to my surprise) France:

Two years after Chernobyl, French nuclear operators created Group Intra, a consortium charged with maintaining a fleet of robots for use in major nuclear accidents. The group is on call around the clock and pledges to deliver equipment and operators anywhere in France within 24 hours. Its robots have hydraulic manipulator arms and can go 10 hours without external power. Some can be remotely controlled from a distance of 10 kilometers.

You can see some photos of the indoor French robots here (very Wall-E I reckon). The outdoor ones remind a little of equipment from Thunderbirds.

So they do cheese, wine and disaster robots very well. What more do you need?