Japan rejects PLA offer of robots to handle disaster at nuclear plant

An offer by the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to send robots designed to handle nuclear accidents to Japan has been turned down because Tokyo does not want help from the Chinese military.

Professor Song Aiguo, director of the robotic sensor and control laboratory at Nanjing's Southeast University, said a team of robots from the Nanjing Military Region's nuclear emergency response task force had been ready for deployment since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami crippled reactors at the Fukushima nuclear plant causing an environmental and humanitarian disaster.

But the Japanese government had rejected the offer, he said. Song is the leader of the nuclear response robot project commissioned by the PLA.

Both the Chinese Foreign Ministry and Defence Ministry have declined to comment on the offer. Earlier reports said the Japanese have rejected other offers by the Chinese army, including aids from PLA medical ship Peace Ark.

Robot experts around the world have been deeply puzzled by the absence of Japanese robots at Fukushima. From Las Vegas to Tokyo, robots developed by Japanese companies such as Mitsubishi and Sony have been the stars at the world's biggest electronic shows, with their artificial intelligence and delicate design leaving competitors from other countries such as the United States and China far behind.

But Song said that was also the biggest weakness of Japanese robots: they were not good at dirty work such as handling meltdowns at nuclear plants. At Fukushima, radiation escaping from damaged fuel cores could damage a robot's computer gear and storage device and wreck the central processing unit, he said.