Radioactive Robot: The Machines That Cleaned Up Three Mile Island
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WORKHORSE: "Red" Whittaker sits atop Workhorse in a picture from the 1980s, surrounded by the team that helped build it. Courtesy of Carnegie Mellon University
REDBOT: The CoreSampler was the second of three robots built by a team of students led by "Red" Whittaker to help with the TMI sweep up; it carried a column of drills that allowed engineers to take samples from the walls of the reactor's basement to test for radioactive contamination. Courtesy of Carnegie Mellon University
RAD ROVER: In a photo from the 1980s Whittaker sits in a control room with the Rover, or Remote Reconnaissance Vehicle, a robot he built with students that carried lights and cameras and provided engineers with the first video images of Three Mile Island's contaminated basement after the nation's worst nuke accident there on March 28, 1979. Courtesy of Carnegie Mellon University
THREE MILE ISLAND: One of the two nuclear reactors at this facility in 1979 suffered a partial meltdown and released radioactivity into the atmosphere—the worst nuclear power accident in U.S. history. Courtesy of NRC
