Robo Rooter

 

One night last November, my friend Mark started explaining how his brother-in-law basically builds robots to mop up mistakes at nuclear weapons plants. Turns out he was onto something.

Matt Cole, in the lab (Photo: Leon Chew/Wired)

After I met Matt Cole I became pretty fascinated with his robotics work and his motivation to design robotics that scooch and roll through radioactive spaces to clean up old nuclear sites or help repair snafus at operating power plants.

Wired Magazine published my short profile of Cole and his work in May 2010. It was my first piece in Wired, and it just touches on the work that Cole and his company, S.A. Technology, do. The larger issue is how technology like this plays into the debate over nuclear energy and new nuke plants, since it eliminates some human risk but doesn’t directly address the problems over how to actually dispose of radioactive waste.