ITER hot Cell—Remote handling system maintenance overview

Friconneau, J.P.; Beaudoin, V.; Dammann, A.; Dremel, C.; Martins, J.P.; Pitcher, C.S.

doi:10.1016/j.fusengdes.2017.01.005

Cited by 15 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Special remote handling tools will be able to replace heavy components such as the blanket modules, divertor cassettes and the port plugs, with weights of up to 50 tons. A substantial Hot Cell Facility, HCF (Friconneau et al, 2017), will permit maintenance and processing of irradiated and tritiated components that have been removed from the tokamak. Transportation between the tokamak and the HCF will be carried out using a sealed transport cask.…”

Section: Auxiliary and Plant Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Magnetic Confinement Fusion—Development Facilities

Donné

Federici²,

Ibarra

et al. 2021

Encyclopedia of Nuclear Energy

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Section: Auxiliary and Plant Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Magnetic Confinement Fusion—Development Facilities

Donné

Federici²,

Ibarra

et al. 2021

Encyclopedia of Nuclear Energy

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“…These robotic solutions, though, are not designed to be adapted to an existing environment, but the facility itself is being developed to be robot-friendly. Between the robotic systems of ITER [26] can be found a blanket remote handling system [27], a divertor remote handling system [28], a cask and plug remote handling system [29], an in vessel viewing system [30], a neutral beam remote handling system [31] and a remote handling for hot cell [5]. This systems have to work in areas with high radioactivity, as the blanket remote handling system which it will be operated in a high radiation environment (250 Gy/h max.)…”

Section: B Existing Robotic Systems For Radioactive Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some companies present hazardous facilities, and the use of robots would increase not only the safety of the personnel avoiding human access to their plants but also their availability, thanks to reduced reaction time if robots are already available in place. Among these companies, those dedicated to nuclear power production such as Fukushima [4] and ITER [5], but also centres devoted to nuclear research [6], such as CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, XFEL [7], the European X-ray free-electron laser, or FERMILAB, present obvious hazardous plants, due to their intrinsic high-radiation level. More in details, CERN has more than 50 km of underground particle accelerators [8], which come not only with high radiation levels, but with the common risks of underground working sites as well, such as oxygen deficiency, limited access, fire risks, and floods.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multimodal Human-Robot Interface for Accessible Remote Robotic Interventions in Hazardous Environments

et al. 2019

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Human-Robot Interfaces have a key role in the design of secure and efficient robotic systems. Great effort has been put during the past decades on the design of advanced interfaces for domestic and industrial robots. However, robots for intervention in unplanned and hazardous scenarios still need further research, especially when the mission requires the use of multiple robotic systems, to obtain an acceptable level of usability and safety. This paper describes the design and the software engineering process behind the development of a modular and multimodal Human-Robot Interface for intervention with a cooperative team of robots, as well as its validation and commissioning, as it is being used in real operations at CERN's accelerators complex. The proposed Human-Robot Interface allows the control of a heterogeneous set of robots homogeneously, providing the operator, among other features, with live scripting functionalities which can be programmed and adapted in run-time, for example, to increase operator's multi-tasking in a multi-agent scenario. The operator is given the capability to enter in the control loop between the HRI and the robot and customize the control commands according to the operation. To provide such functionalities, well-defined software development approaches have been adopted, for guaranteeing the modularity and the safety of the system during its continuous development. The paper describes the modules offered by the HRI, such as the multimodality, multi-robot control, safety, operators training, and communications architecture, among others. The HRI and the CERN Robotic Framework where it belongs are designed in a modular manner, in order to be able to adapt both, software and hardware architecture in a short time, to the next planned mission. Results present the experience gained with the system, demonstrating a high level of usability, learnability and safety when operated by both, non-experts and qualified robotic operators. The multimodal user interface has demonstrated to be very accurate and secure, providing a unique system to control, in a teleoperated or supervised manner, both single and multiple heterogeneous mobile manipulators. At the moment of writing, the user interface has been successfully used in 100 real interventions in radioactive industrial environments. The presented HRI is a novel research contribution in terms of multimodality, adaptability and modularity for mobile manipulator robotic teams in radioactive environments, especially for its software architecture, as part of the CERN Robotic Framework.

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“…When operating equipment in a hot cell is broken, the equipment is maintained by replacing the fault modules rather than fixing them directly, since the spare space is not sufficient, and the operator cannot access directly. The replaced parts are decontaminated in a separated space before they are repaired by a human operator or disposed as waste [17]. A similar method can be considered as a maintenance method of the pyroprocessing equipment.…”

Section: Maintenance Concept Under Pesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Conceptual Framework for Equipment Maintenance Automation under a Pyroprocessing Automation Framework

Han

Ryu

Kim

et al. 2019

Science and Technology of Nuclear Installations

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For most of the remote maintenance activities of equipment in a hot cell, replacing breakdown modules is preferred over in situ repair because of insufficient space in the cell and the limited operability of remote handling tools. In such cases, the maintenance operation can be decomposed into transport of the new modules to the failed equipment, replacement of the broken modules with new ones, and then transport of the broken parts to the reserved space for further repair or disposal. In this respect, transfer is the most basic operation during remote maintenance, which is also true for the maintenance of pyroprocessing equipment. Hence, this paper proposes a maintenance automation framework for automated pyroprocessing equipment from the standpoint of module transfer. For the maintenance automation framework, maintenance-related functions and events are defined, and they are integrated with the pyroprocess automation framework. The proposed framework is verified by a case study on the maintenance of a large module through a hardware-in-the-loop simulation.

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ITER hot Cell—Remote handling system maintenance overview

Cited by 15 publications

References 5 publications

Magnetic Confinement Fusion—Development Facilities

Magnetic Confinement Fusion—Development Facilities

Multimodal Human-Robot Interface for Accessible Remote Robotic Interventions in Hazardous Environments

A Conceptual Framework for Equipment Maintenance Automation under a Pyroprocessing Automation Framework

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