Objective
The work relates to the construction and operation of a teleoperated pipe removal monitoring, and decontamination system to remove highly contaminated pipework from positions where radiation doses are high and restrict man access. The project includes the proving of the system in an inactive mock-up followed by pipe cutting (U2 drain line of B14 building of Windscale Laboratory) removal, monitoring, decontamination and disposal.
Advantage will be taken of techniques and equipment developed under earlier work in the Programme for Decommissioning of Nuclear Installations (eg, FI2D0012), as well as of other initiatives (eg, Teleman).
The work has a wide application area and over all types of nuclear facilities. Specific benefits of the project will be:
a reduction in occupational exposure to radiation, due to automatic and remote manipulation;
a reduction in background radiation levels in the vicinity of the work areas;
an improvement of the quality assurance of operations and waste accountancy;
improved safety and protection of operators;
a reduction in the cost of decommissioning activities due to more rapid work completion;
improvement in the awareness of remote technology for decommissioning.
AEA Technology brings a range of knowledge and experience to project and is willing to share details of arising technical innovations with other community members.
The system will be based on already available components such as the Nuclear Engineered Robot System (NEATER), the Telerobotic Control System (HTC) and the Stereoscopic Television System (TV3).
A computer simulation of a teleoperated cutting, monitoring and decontamination was carried out to optimize the equipment configuration and the equipment capability with particular reference to cell coverage. The simulation results gave the basic design data enabling system design layouts to begin.
The cable deployment proved to be a difficult problem that was resolved with a link type cable carrier. Suitable equipment has been supplied and provisional assembly made. The robot trolley has been designed and assembled in a non motorized form. The trolley design includes the tool change rack and the anchoring of the cable carrier. Work has begun on updating the NEATER robot to the latest standard. The robot has been assembled on to the trolley for initial stability testing.
The decontamination equipment arrangement was reviewed using information from a similar decontamination. This revealed that the higher decontamination efficiency using the foam technique will produce higher level effluent. The system design has now been altered to reflect this.
A radiation monitoring tool has been identified and its integration into the system is underway. Close liaison was required with the facility management to ensure that health physics requirements were met.
A set of standard cutting and handling tools has been manufactured. These are 2 saws, one drill and 2 jaws. A saw was modified for right angle mounting to take into account information resulting from the computer simulation work. A device for changing cutting tool blades remotely using master slave manipulators has been designed, made and tested.
WORK PROGRAMME
1. Design, specification and commissioning of the robot and auxiliary equipment support frame
2. Design, specification and commissioning of the decontamination equipment
3. Design, specification and commissioning of the tools and tool change system
4. Design, specification and commissioning of the control room
5. Design, specification and commissioning of the pipe clamping and deployment system
6. Service requirements and interface connection will be specified and survey services provided.
7. Design, specification and commissioning of the waste handling system
8. Design, specification and commissioning of the viewing including pan/tilt unit and controls, cables, lighting.
9. Design, specification and commissioning of the mock-up area, installation of complete system, drawing up, defining and agreement of test schedule.
10. Preparation of safety case and obtention of approval for robotic safety, active area safety, pressurized suit safety.
11. Site-specific activities including delivery of equipment, installation of control room, robot frame, interconnections, Commission of Full Test of All Systems, documentation for maintenance and repair purposes.
12. Removal, monitoring and decontamination of pipework, including waste arisings disposal and dispatch to disposal route, as well as removal of robot system and cleaning up work area.
13. Specific data on costs, worker exposure, working time, waste arisings and fissile material recovery will be derived from the execution of work.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- engineering and technology electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering electronic engineering control systems
- natural sciences mathematics applied mathematics mathematical model
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Coordinator
OX11 0RA Didcot
United Kingdom
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