The part about deploying from a non-contaminated area is important because the Elios model we used has a lot of kick and had to be launched from within a CA. It can definitely create an airborne area. The radiological and visual data collected was well worth it though.
from the article,...
....It does this both by taking the place of personnel where possible for visual and radiation data collection,....the question always is:
when doing a CBA is it:
just a cool toy with some dose reduction gains OR,...
does it allow me to reduce human staffing and save on payroll, benefits and liabilities OR,...
does it create even more need for qualified human staffing and therefore cancels out the machine replaced man hours with machine tending man-hours, OR,...
do I save enough with dose reduction that it pays for itself?
cool toys are cool, just like cool cars and cool boats,...
but nuke ops is not a hobby, it's a business,....