With 420,000 Quebec public sector workers on strike on Monday, and with little progress in negotiations, the Front Commun promises further strike action.

The post Hundreds of thousands of Quebec public sector workers vow further strike action appeared first on rabble.ca.

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says diplomatic efforts aimed at resolving the North Korean crisis “will continue until the first bomb drops.”

That statement comes despite President Donald Trump’s tweets a couple of weeks ago that his chief envoy was “wasting his time” trying to negotiate with “Little Rocket Man,” a mocking nickname Trump has given the nuclear-armed nation’s leader, Kim Jong Un.

“I think he does want to be clear with Kim Jong Un and that regime in North Korea that he has military preparations ready to go and he has those military options on the table. And we have spent substantial time actually perfecting those,” Tillerson told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “But be clear: The president has also made clear to me that he wants this solved diplomatically. He’s not seeking to go to war.”

Recent mixed messaging from the top of the U.S. government has raised concerns about the potential for miscalculation amid the increasingly bellicose exchange of words by Trump and the North Korean leader.

Trump told the U.N. General Assembly last month that if the U.S. is “forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.” Trump also tweeted that Korea’s leadership “won’t be around much longer” if it continued its provocations, a declaration that led the North’s foreign minister to assert that Trump had “declared war on our country.”

Tillerson acknowledged during a recent trip to Beijing that the Trump administration was keeping open direct channels of communications with North Korea and probing the North’s willingness to talk. He provided no elaboration about those channels or the substance of any discussions.

Soon after, Trump took to Twitter, saying he had told “our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man … Save your energy Rex, we’ll do what has to be done!” Trump offered no further explanation, but he said all military options are on the table for dealing with North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

Analysts have speculated about whether the president and his top diplomat were playing “good cop, bad cop” with North Korea, and how China might interpret the confusing signals from Washington. Beijing is the North’s main trading partner, and the U.S. is counting on China to enforce U.N. sanctions.

“Rest assured that the Chinese are not confused in any way what the American policy towards North Korea (is) or what our actions and efforts are directed at,” Tillerson said.

Asked if Trump’s tweets undermined Tillerson, the secretary said: “I think what the president is doing is he’s trying to motivate action on a number of people’s part, in particular the regime in North Korea. I think he does want to be clear with Kim Jong Un and that regime in North Korea that he has military preparations ready to go and he has those military options on the table and we have spent substantial time perfecting those.”

He added that Trump “has made it clear to me to continue my diplomatic efforts, which we are, and I’ve told others those diplomatic efforts will continue until the first bomb drops.”

North Korea has launched missiles that potentially can strike the U.S. mainland and recently conducted its largest ever underground nuclear explosion. It has threatened to explode another nuclear bomb above the Pacific.

The post Rex Tillerson says continue diplomacy with North Korea ‘until first bomb drops’ appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

More than 500,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled their homes since August to escape systematic violence at the hands of government soldiers in Myanmar. The U.N. has called the actions taken by Myanmar forces against the group “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

A report released by Amnesty International on Wednesday documents widespread rape, killings and burnings of Rohingya across the Rakhine State in Myanmar. The report includes extensive interviews of Rohingya refugees who tell stories of live burnings, sexual violence and mass shootings at the hands of soldiers.

To escape persecution, Rohingya refugees are fleeing in droves to neighboring Bangladesh, a country described by some as a reluctant host for the thousands of refugees behind its borders. Conditions within Bangladesh show refugee camps beyond capacity, as organizations struggle to keep up with humanitarian aid.

Find out more: Rohingya Muslims have been denied citizenship in Myanmar since 1982, though they’ve lived in the area since the 12th century. They are not considered one of the country’s official ethnic groups. As such, their lack of official identity bars them from government services and travel.

Officials from Myanmar, a majority Buddhist state, claim Rohingya are actually immigrants from Bangladesh to justify their exclusion of the group. This most recent burst of violence comes from Myanmar’s crackdown following clashes with the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA). After the government declared ARSA a terrorist organization, the retaliation escalated into hundreds of Rohingya villages.

Where to give: BRAC, a top-ranked NGO based out of Bangladesh, is scaling up humanitarian efforts for clean water, health, sanitation and child care for refugees from Myanmar. You can learn more about their efforts here.

An emergency appeal was made by the Disasters Emergency Committee for immediate crisis relief funds. DEC distributes funds to 13 member aid organizations.
UNHCR, UNICEF and Save the Children have donation pages dedicated to the crisis, as does the International Rescue Committee. CNN’s Public Good page provides a user-friendly resource to find NGOs that match your giving goals.

To give to starvation relief, try Action Against Hunger or the World Food Programme.

Be sure to research organizations receiving your financial contributions, not only to find the best organization aligned with your goals, but also to avoid potential scams. For the latest information on aid organizations and charities, visit GuideStar or Charity Navigator to ensure your donations are going in the right direction.

The post As Rohingya refugees continue to flee from persecution, here’s how you can help appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Pressure from 10 clubs could change the AFL’s competitive balance mechanism.

The man who helped Justin Hodges escape a charge before last year’s grand final will try to save Wade Graham.

Sir Keir Starmer's beleaguered former chief of staff will no longer take up the position of “envoy to the nations and regions.”

Stephen Flynn has been criticised by SNP colleagues after saying he would stay on at Westminster, even if elected to Holyrood.

A fire engine on its way to a callout has been involved in a collision with two cars on a road junction in Edinburgh.

Motorists have been urged to plan ahead with a major bridge due to close for work is carried out.  

The last two weeks have had an interesting mix of news, and it just might break Chris by the end of the show. Anna Marie is hijacking the Question of the Week, but it's definitely a unique question! Alex stealths his way into the cast alongside Kelley and Peter. How is it still only July?

The post RPG Cast – Episode 550: “Gamer Girl Glue” appeared first on RPGamer.

Josh is having an Ys-y time. Anna Marie ranks all the slime families. Robert gets notified every time google kills a product. And Chris tells everyone to blink on cue.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 572: “Partly Cloudy Souls With a Chance of Roguelike” appeared first on RPGamer.

It's been a week full of news, some exciting, some alarming. Chris breaks the site...repeatedly. Kelley comes to terms with the fact mowing the lawn is hard in real life. Josh explains Japanese tabloid scandals. Anna Marie assigns a tedious task to Pascal.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 594: “The Queen Needs a Monster Rig” appeared first on RPGamer.

The podcast trio is not at all ready for the flood of September releases. Anna Marie is kind of sick of the trigger, Chris insists Eclipse is owed an apology, and Kelley wants to know what is this garbage and how she can get more of it.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 599: “Serious Health Issues? No, Just a Cat” appeared first on RPGamer.

Chris has a normal amount of coffee on his shirt. Kelley conks her cat on the head with a controller. And Josh thinks Maglam Lord is a contraceptive device.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 617: “Yoko Taro Made This While Queuing for His Raid” appeared first on RPGamer.

On this week's show, Chris gets run over by a wheat thresher, Robert throws his phone at a car, Kelley's cat gets offended at being a prop for gaming, and Josh goes kart racing in Horizon Forbidden West.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 620: “I Just Got Barbecued in a Grave Pit” appeared first on RPGamer.

Johnathan Stringer tries to sate your Saturn lust with a Satiator. Kelley Ryan was a naysayer, then she took a chaos to the knee. And Chris Privitere tries to calculate his age in internet memes.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 623: “Great Value Gundams” appeared first on RPGamer.

Chris has a picnic with Emet-Selch. Kelley gets kicked out of the guild by her husband. Vahn drowns in gacha games. And everyone is honking. What is going on?

The post RPG Cast – Episode 662: “That’s Just a Skill Issue” appeared first on RPGamer.

Chris jumps in the party hole. Kelley power washes Biff Tannen. And Phil gets the Picross zoomies.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 703: “Touhou Chex Quest” appeared first on RPGamer.

Kelley uses familiars to click her buttons. Josh scribbles in comic sans over your collector's edition with a sharpie. Which is good because Chris can't handle yet another collector's edition. They're all doing better than Ryan, though, who is suffering from Wizardry PTSD.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 731: “Dragon Quest: Start Your Own Taco Adventure” appeared first on RPGamer.

KLEINER Perkins Caufield & Byers has agreed to invest in ephemeral message service Snapchat at a valuation of close to $US10 bn.

Square Enix has revealed the lifetime sales for two of its biggest franchises Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest.

The Final Fantasy series has now sold over 195 million units worldwide and the Dragon Quest series has sold over 91 million units worldwide.

"The Square Enix Group also boasts a valuable portfolio of intellectual property including: Final Fantasy, which has sold over 195 million units worldwide; Dragon Quest, which has sold over 91 million units worldwide; and the legendary Space Invaders," said Square Enix.

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.

Full Article - https://www.vgchartz.com/article/463021/final-fantasy-series-sales-top-195m-dragon-quest-series-tops-91m/

Stationeers and Icarus developers RocketWerkz are making a spiritual successor to beloved space sim Kerbal Space Program, which is currently titled "Kitten Space Agency" in a flagrant display of adherence to wholesome internet trends. It's based on an actual Kerbal Space Program 2 pitch the studio threw at Take-Two subsidiary Private Division back in the day. RocketWerkz CEO and original DayZ creator Dean Hall has hired several former KSP and KSP2 developers to work on the game, and is describing it on social media as a "KSP killer".

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Twitch have introduced a new "Politics and Sensitive Social Issues" label for streams that "focus" on topics like "elections, civic integrity, and war or military conflict". As with the streaming giant's existing labels for M-rated material, sexual themes or depictions of gambling, the idea is that viewers can filter out such streams in advance by altering their settings.

Advertisers, similarly, can "make better choices about the content they want to advertise next to" - in other words, pull their ads from a whole swathe of material if they don't want to be associated with anything controversial. Twitch's hope is that "the labels will allow advertisers to have more context to inform which types of streams they show their ads alongside, which we expect to increase brands’ confidence in running ads on Twitch, and could bring new advertisers to our service."

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Putting aside my natural annoyance at Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater for almost beating out the Twarhammer series in the headline real estate wars, I am more than a little excited to play. Some days, you simply must feast on a tree frog, and while we still don’t have a solid release date, that day doesn’t feel too far away. Good news for stealth fans, and perhaps gooder news for a dozen strapline writers sweating profusely, soiling themselves in anticipation of using “kept you waiting, huh?”.

Until then, I at least have a steady drip feed of new information to keep me sated, the latest of which is the substantial hint that there'll be some new dialogue in the game, as per the video below. Alongside that, the previously pseudonymous Suzetta Miñet - who was credited with voicing EVA in MGS3 and Peace Walker - has revealed herself to be Jodi Benson, the voice of Ariel in Disney’s The Little Mermaid. Cheers for the spot, Automaton West.

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When I was a competitive long-distance runner at school, breath control was paramount. We were never really taught this, mind. It was an art you picked up through practice: how to breathe before the race, saturating your blood with O2 without dizzying yourself; when to permit the shorter, emergency breaths and when to apply restraint; when to deepen your inhales and charge yourself up for an attack on a hill.

And then, how to organise your body around your breath, straightening your posture to expand your lungs without tipping back too far and squandering muscle power; how to breath in time with your stride and the movement of your shoulders, so as to firm up your momentum and shave a miraculous-feeling minute off your finishing time. All this, plus various daft psychological war gambits of my own devising. When overtaking or being overtaken, I used to seal my lips shut on that side and breath through the other corner of my mouth, to make it look like I was hardly out of breath at all.

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When multiplayer fishing game Webfishing came out last month, it offered a relaxing hangout zone for cats and dogs. Everything revolves around catching, selling, and collecting the fish that gather in the rivers of a small island. It also lets you customise your character with clothing. Mostly simple hats and shorts, but some options let players celebrate their sexuality, such as a rainbow-adorned t-shirts, or titles that hang above your character which simply say "Trans" or "Bi". All this led one player to complain there was no "Straight" title. So, the developer added one. It costs 10 grand.

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Got an email about this. Looks cool. Is free. “I’ll write about that,” I thought. “I’ll write about that for Rock Paper Shotgun, a place that semi-regularly posts articles about cool and free games.” So here we are. If you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, assuming the only reason I’d open an article in a superfluous and straightforward manner is because I’m about to deliver some sort of third sentence twist, you’re completely wrong! There’s no twist at all. I’m simply going to deliver some information about the game in a neutral tone. You can find VED: Purification, a free prologue demo to RPG VED, here.

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The developers who remade Half-Life as Black Mesa are working on a new roguelite co-op shooter. It will feature no physicists celebrating Bring Your Shotgun To Work Day, but instead let up to four players tactically breach oil rigs and airports occupied by corporate-sponsored mercenaries. In Rogue Point the richest CEO on earth has croaked it, causing various megacorps to compete in a violent bum rush for control of that wealth. Which is where your team of renegade shooterists come in. They don't want to win this contest, they just want everyone else to lose.

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"Imagine you buy a pinball machine, and years later, you enter your den to go play it, only to discover that all the paddles are missing, the pinball and bumpers are gone, and the monitor that proudly displayed your unassailable high score is removed". As reported by Polygon, that's an argument put forth by a new lawsuit against Ubisoft, filed by two Californian players of The Crew. They're suing the company in a proposed class action lawsuit over shutting down the racing game's servers, rendering it unplayable.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: It’s been almost a month since Hurricane Maria destroyed much of Puerto Rico and killed at least 48 people. The island and its residents are still coming to grips with the scale of the devastation.

William Brangham brings us the latest.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Many Puerto Ricans are still in the dark, without electrical power. Hundreds of thousands still have no access to running water, and the rebuilding of the countless damaged homes, roads and facilities is just beginning.

The Associated Press reported yesterday that almost half the sewage treatment plants on the island are still out of service, increasing the risk of contamination and disease.

I’m joined now by David Begnaud. He’s a correspondent from CBS News who’s been doing some very strong reporting there from since when the storm hit, and is just back from his latest trip to the island.

David, welcome to the NewsHour.

I wonder. We saw many of your reports and others of people still three weeks out from the storm who are still drinking from streams and creeks. You heard — I mentioned this AP report about fears of contamination.

Can you just tell us what is going on there? How are people getting water now?

DAVID BEGNAUD, CBS News: Well, let me tell you this.

The governor of Puerto Rico said this morning that he’s aware of those reports and that they’re looking into it. What’s concerning, William, is that three weeks after the storm and at least a week after the allegations first surfaced that people might be trying to drink from toxic wells at what’s known as Superfund sites, the governor of Puerto Rico is still saying, we’re looking into it and telling people to stay out of rivers where sewage may be spilling into the river.

And, he said, we want them to stay away from the coastal areas.

How are people doing? They’re still desperate to get water. No one seems to be able to figure out how to get enough water to every single person on that island who needs it. And as long as people need water, it’s still an emergency phase.

Nearly four weeks later, no one seems to be able to move from the emergency to the recovery.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So, people who are — we see them drinking out of these PVC pipes that they have kind of rigged and sort of poked into the side of a creek.

People are just drinking that water straight, without purification, without boiling it; is that right?

DAVID BEGNAUD: Absolutely.

Look, they have got the PVC pipes tapped into the mountains so that it’s coming out of the stream that way. And they literally are — I saw a woman walk up to a potable water tank that the military had brought in, and she had a Clorox bottle.

And I said, “Ma’am, you’re putting drinkable water in a Clorox bottle?”

And she said, “It’s all I have got.”

Now, that was a good scenario. The other scenarios are people right now who are drinking from streams and creeks and rivers who have no water filters, who have nothing, right? They’re just taking this water.

Now, listen, the government got a million water-purifying tablets within the last week. It took almost three weeks to get those. Now there’s a large push to bring in water filters.

I have got to tell you, most of the water filters I’m seeing brought in are coming from the private sector, and civilian samaritans who are getting 1,000 or more from the mainland and flying them over to Puerto Rico and personally hand-delivering them.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: That’s really incredible.

Medical facilities were another big — just a huge devastation on the island. I know you have been doing a lot of reporting on the USS Comfort.

DAVID BEGNAUD: Yes.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: This is the huge Naval hospital that is now just offshore Puerto Rico.

But I understand it hasn’t been fully utilized. Can you tell us what your reporting has found there?

DAVID BEGNAUD: The two men running the ship told us that nearly 87 percent of the ship is empty. Sounds alarming, right? They have 200 beds, and 87 percent are empty.

Now, here’s what they said: We stand ready for whatever the government wants to do. We are waiting to be told by the government.

So, I went to the governor, and said exactly what’s happening. And he said: “Look, I’m not satisfied with what the protocol was from the beginning.”

He said, initially, they were prioritizing only the most critically ill patients go to the Comfort. And he said there was a layered process that was complicating things.

So, the governor, Ricardo Rossello, said: “I started to take out some of those layers, and I, said, listen, take people on the ship who may not be critically ill, but need good medical care and can’t get it at the hospital, where the lights are flickering and the A.C. is not running.”

That’s what the governor said.

Within a matter of hours, I got a tweet from a third-year medical student who said: “Let me tell you what a nightmare it has been to reach the Comfort.”

He said: “We have got a pediatric patient who desperately needs to get off this island, either to a hospital on the mainland or to the Comfort.”

And he said: “I went through Google and the local newspaper to find the number. I couldn’t find it.”

Now, here is how things work. Within about 30 minutes of that tweet going out and that medical student’s story being posted, the governor’s spokesperson responded with numbers that should be able to help.

The bottom line here, William, is that asking relentless questions and the good work of journalism is what’s making a difference there. It’s no one person. There’s no heroic work that’s being done by any journalist, other than people who are going back to the same officials and asking some of the same questions, relentlessly seeking the right answer that will make a difference.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: One of the other pieces of reporting that you did that was very early in the story was this backlog of supplies trapped in container ships on the ports in Puerto Rico.

I understand some of that — some of those supplies are now moving. Can you tell us, are they getting to where they need to be throughout the island?

DAVID BEGNAUD: So, the shipping containers you’re talking about, about 3,000 sitting in the Port of San Juan, have been moved out, not all of them, but a majority of them.

And they were intended for grocery stores around the island. Right? So, those were private companies that had brought in these shipping containers, paid for the supplies, but couldn’t move them because their truck drivers were either at home, because the home had been destroyed, or the road was impassable.

More and more supplies are getting out. But let me tell you, the grocery stores around the island, they have a lot of nonperishables, Pringles, candy, cookies, all on the shelf.

But when you go to the meat section, it’s nearly 75 percent empty at the stores we have been to, the produce section 90 percent empty. And finding bottled water there is almost like playing a game.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: David Begnaud, CBS News, thank you so much for your reporting. Thanks for your time.

DAVID BEGNAUD: You bet.

The post Puerto Ricans still don’t have reliable drinking water, and fears of contamination are rising appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

What would it take to turn Texas, a Republican stronghold, into a blue state? According to data from SurveyMonkey, just remove all the gun owners from the Lone Star State and it would have gone to Hillary Clinton in 2016. You can do the same thing in liberal California. Remove all the non-gun owners and the state would have voted for Donald Trump.

That’s how divisive the issue of gun control is in American politics.

SurveyMonkey found that no other demographic — not race, religion or gender — so perfectly divided voters. In the 2016 election, 47 percent of Trump supporters said gun control was an issue important enough to influence their vote. That’s compared to just 27 percent of voters who supported Hillary Clinton.

But what does this divide mean? How is it impacting gun control policy, and how might this issue change in light of recent mass shootings like Las Vegas, Orlando and Newtown? To discuss the data, join a PBS NewsHour-hosted Twitter chat at 1 p.m. EDT Thursday with data journalist Dante Chinni (@Dchinni), professor and chairman of political science at the University of Kansas Don Haider-Markel (@dhmarkel), and Washington Post correspondent Philip Bump (@pbump).

Have questions? Tweet them using #NewsHourChats.

The post Twitter chat: How the gun control debate mirrors larger issues of partisanship in America appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Martin Lewis has warned Tesco customers of a piece of small print that could see £18m worth of Clubcard points wasted.

In the centre of a distant galaxy, a supermassive black hole has swallowed up a star 9 times the sun’s mass in the biggest and brightest such cosmic meal we’ve ever seen

The James Webb Space Telescope has spotted six strange worlds the size of planets that formed like stars – and the smallest may be building its own miniature solar system

A chance to observe the high-speed re-entry of a falling satellite will give researchers important insights on how debris burns up in our atmosphere

Information on faces recognised, voice commands and internet searches can be extracted from an Amazon Echo smart assistant without help from the user or manufacturer

Archaeologists are using AI and US spy satellite imagery from the cold war to find ancient underground aqueducts that helped humans survive in the desert

Using more training data and computational power is meant to make AIs more reliable, but tests suggest large language models actually get less reliable as they grow

The 2024 Nobel prize in physics has gone to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton for discoveries that enabled machine learning and are key to the development of artificial intelligence models like ChatGPT

Who built this ripped, anatomically graphic snowman? Is there a world of snowmen offscreen waiting to be turned into sex objects for widows?

Express Sport writers have decided who should replace Gary Lineker

Thirteen years since a massive earthquake and tsunami struck the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in northern Japan, causing a loss of power, meltdowns and a major release of radioactive material, operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) finally seems to be close to extracting the first bit of melted fuel from the complex—thanks to a special telescopic robotic device.

Despite Japan’s prowess in industrial robotics, TEPCO had no robots to deploy in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. Since then, however, robots have been used to measure radiation levels, clear building debris, and survey the exterior and interior of the plant overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

It will take decades to decommission Fukushima Dai-ichi, and one of the most dangerous, complex tasks is the removal and storage of about 880 tons of highly radioactive molten fuel in three reactor buildings that were operating when the tsunami hit. TEPCO believes mixtures of uranium, zirconium and other metals accumulated around the bottom of the primary containment vessels (PCVs) of the reactors—but the exact composition of the material is unknown. The material is “fuel debris,” which TEPCO defines as overheated fuel that has melted with fuel rods and in-vessel structures, then cooled and re-solidified. The extraction was supposed to begin in 2021 but ran into development delays and obstacles in the extraction route; the coronavirus pandemic also slowed work.

While TEPCO wants a molten fuel sample to analyze for exact composition, getting just a teaspoon of the stuff has proven so tricky that the job is years behind schedule. That may change soon as crews have deployed the telescoping device to target the 237 tons of fuel debris in Unit 2, which suffered less damage than the other reactor buildings and no hydrogen explosion, making it an easier and safer test bed.

“We plan to retrieve a small amount of fuel debris from Unit 2, analyze it to evaluate its properties and the process of its formation, and then move on to large-scale retrieval,” says Tatsuya Matoba, a spokesperson for TEPCO. “We believe that extracting as much information as possible from the retrieved fuel debris will likely contribute greatly to future decommissioning work.”

How TEPCO Plans to Retrieve a Fuel Sample

Getting to the fuel is easier said than done. Shaped like an inverted light bulb, the damaged PCV is a 33-meter-tall steel structure that houses the reactor pressure vessel where nuclear fission took place. A 2-meter-long isolation valve designed to block the release of radioactive material sits at the bottom of the PCV, and that’s where the robot will go in. The fuel debris itself is partly underwater.

The robot arm is being preceded by a smaller telescopic device. The telescopic device, which is trying to retrieve 3 grams of the fuel debris without further contamination to the outside environment, is similar to the larger robot arm, which is better suited for the retrieval of larger bits of debris.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning and UK-based Veolia Nuclear Solutions developed the robot arm to enter small openings in the PCV, where it can survey the interior and grab the fuel. Mostly made of stainless steel and aluminum, the arm measures 22 meters long, weighs 4.6 tons and can move along 18 degrees of freedom. It’s a boom-style arm, not unlike the robotic arms on the International Space Station, that rests in a sealed enclosure box when not extended.

The arm consists of four main elements: a carriage that pushes the assembly through the openings, arm links that can fold up like a ream of dot matrix printer paper, an arm that has three telescopic stages, and a “wand” (an extendable pipe-shaped component) with cameras and a gripper on its tip. Both the arm and the wand can tilt downward toward the target area.

After the assembly is pushed through the PCV’s isolation valve, it angles downward over a 7.2-meter-long rail heading toward the base of the reactor. It continues through existing openings in the pedestal, a concrete structure supporting the reactor, and the platform, which is a flat surface under the reactor.

Then, the tip is lowered on a cable like the grabber in a claw machine toward the debris field at the bottom of the pedestal. The gripper tool at the end of the component has two delicate pincers (only 5 square millimeters), that can pinch a small pebble of debris. The debris is transferred to a container and, if all goes well, is brought back up through the openings and placed in a glovebox: A sealed, negative-pressure container in the reactor building where initial testing can be performed. It will then be moved to a Japan Atomic Energy Agency facility in nearby Ibaraki Prefecture for detailed analysis.

While the gripper on the telescopic device currently being used was able to reach the debris field and grasp a piece of rubble—it’s unknown if it was actually melted fuel—last month, two of the four cameras on the device stopped working a few days later, and the device was eventually reeled back into the enclosure box. Crews confirmed there were no problems with signal wiring from the control panel in the reactor building, and proceeded to perform oscilloscope testing. TEPCO speculates that radiation passing through camera semiconductor elements caused electrical charge to build up, and that the charge will drain if the cameras are left on in a relatively low-dose environment. It was the latest setback in a very long project.

“Retrieving fuel debris from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station is an extremely difficult task, and a very important part of decommissioning,” says Matoba. “With the goal of completing the decommissioning in 30 to 40 years, we believe it is important to proceed strategically and systematically with each step of the work at hand.”

This story was updated on 15 October, 2024 to clarify that TEPCO is using two separate tools (a smaller telescopic device and a larger robot arm) in the process of retrieving fuel debris samples.

Simone Giertz came to fame in the 2010s by becoming the self-proclaimed “queen of shitty robots.” On YouTube she demonstrated a hilarious series of self-built mechanized devices that worked perfectly for ridiculous applications, such as a headboard-mounted alarm clock with a rubber hand to slap the user awake.

But Giertz has parlayed her Internet renown into Yetch, a design company that makes commercial consumer products. (The company name comes from how Giertz’s Swedish name is properly pronounced.) Her first release, a daily habit-tracking calendar, was picked up by prestigious outlets such as the Museum of Modern Art design store in New York City. She has continued to make commercial products since, as well as one-off strange inventions for her online audience.

Where did the motivation for your useless robots come from?

Simone Giertz: I just thought that robots that failed were really funny. It was also a way for me to get out of creating from a place of performance anxiety and perfection. Because if you set out to do something that fails, that gives you a lot of creative freedom.

You built up a big online following. A lot of people would be happy with that level of success. But you moved into inventing commercial products. Why?

Giertz: I like torturing myself, I guess! I’d been creating things for YouTube and for social media for a long time. I wanted to try something new and also find longevity in my career. I’m not super motivated to constantly try to get people to give me attention. That doesn’t feel like a very good value to strive for. So I was like, “Okay, what do I want to do for the rest of my career?” And developing products is something that I’ve always been really, really interested in. And yeah, it is tough, but I’m so happy to be doing it. I’m enjoying it thoroughly, as much as there’s a lot of face-palm moments.

Giertz’s every day goal calendar was picked up by the Museum of Modern Art’s design store. Yetch

What role does failure play in your invention process?

Giertz: I think it’s inevitable. Before, obviously, I wanted something that failed in the most unexpected or fun way possible. And now when I’m developing products, it’s still a part of it. You make so many different versions of something and each one fails because of something. But then, hopefully, what happens is that you get smaller and smaller failures. Product development feels like you’re going in circles, but you’re actually going in a spiral because the circles are taking you somewhere.

What advice do you have for aspiring inventors?

Giertz: Make things that you want. A lot of people make things that they think that other people want, but the main target audience, at least for myself, is me. I trust that if I find something interesting, there are probably other people who do too. And then just find good people to work with and collaborate with. There is no such thing as the lonely genius, I think. I’ve worked with a lot of different people and some people made me really nervous and anxious. And some people, it just went easy and we had a great time. You’re just like, “Oh, what if we do this? What if we do this?” Find those people.

This article appears in the November 2024 print issue as “The Queen of Useless Robots.”

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