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EDFA, as part of the Power Plant Physics and Technology programme, has been working on the preconceptual design of a Demonstration Power Plant (DEMO). As part of this programme, a review of the remote maintenance strategy considered maintenance solutions compatible with expected environmental conditions, whilst showing potential for meeting the plant availability targets. A key finding was that, for practical purposes, the expected radiation levels prohibit the use of complex remote handling operations to replace the first wall. In 2012/13, these remote maintenance activities were further extended, providing an insight into the requirements, constraints and challenges. In particular, the assessment of blanket and divertor maintenance, in light of the expected radiation conditions and availability, has elaborated the need for a very different approach from that of ITER. This activity has produced some very informative virtual reality simulations of the blanket segments and pipe removal that are exceptionally valuable in communicating the complexity and scale of the required operations. Through these simulations, estimates of the maintenance task durations have been possible demonstrating that a full replacement of the blankets within 6 months could be achieved. The design of the first wall, including the need to use sacrificial limiters must still be investigated. In support of the maintenance operations, a first indication of the requirements of an Active Maintenance Facility (AMF) has been elaborated.

The present paper proposes a structured Product Development Lifecycle (PDL) model to deal with the concept design stage of complex assemblies. The proposed method provides a systematic approach to design, aimed to improve requirements management, project management and communication among stakeholders as well as to avoid project failures reducing project development time. This research also provides suggestions and recommendations for utilizing different analysis, synthesis and assessment methodologies along with the proposed approach. The process developed, named Iterative and Participative Axiomatic Design Process (IPADeP), is consistent with ISO/IEC 15288: 2008 – “Systems and software engineering”, and INCOSE Systems engineering handbook. It is an iterative and incremental design process, participative and requirements driven, based on the theory of Axiomatic Product Development Lifecycle (APDL). IPADeP provides a systematic methodology in which, starting from a set of experts’ assumptions, a number of conceptual solutions are generated, analysed and evaluated. Based on the results obtained, new iterations can be performed for each level of decomposition while product requirements are refined. In this paper, we applied IPADeP to the initial phase of conceptual design activities for DEMO divertor-to-vacuum vessel locking system in order to propose new innovative solutions

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In hostile industrial environments where human access could be a health risk, a reliable and flexible teleoperation system is an eminent need. ITER is such an example where a dexterous teleoperation system is required for remote handling tasks in a nuclear environment. The compactness of space, high load capacity and reliability makes hydraulic manipulator an obvious choice. However, possible oil leakage from traditional hydraulic systems and the characteristics of water (fire and environmentally safe, chemically neutral, not activated, not affected by radiation) makes the use of water hydraulics the only choice. This paper describes the development of a teleoperation system for ITER consisting of a water hydraulic manipulator as a slave, a commercial haptic device as a master, a human machine interface to assist the operator and a graphical system providing a virtual 3D view of the environment.