Robot designed for faster, safer uranium plant pipe cleanup

The mechanism is designed to measure potentially hazardous radiation at a former uranium plant.

Crews cleaning up a massive former Cold War-era uranium enrichment plant in Ohio plan to deploy a high-tech helper: an autonomous, radiation-measuring robot that will roll through miles of large overhead pipes to spot potentially hazardous residual uranium.

Officials say it's safer, more accurate and tremendously faster than having workers take external measurements to identify which pipes need to be removed as well as decontaminated at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon.