Development and application of high volume remote handling systems in support of JET and ITER

Loving, A.; Allan, Peter; Sykes, N.; Collins, S.; Murcutt, Paul

doi:10.1016/j.fusengdes.2012.02.039

Cited by 19 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 3 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The estimate is based on the EFDA DEMO preconceptual design studies for 2012 [9,14], and uses data extrapolated from recorded times and operational experience from the remote maintenance activities on the JET Tokamak [19,20].…”

Section: Remote Maintenance Durationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pre-conceptual design assessment of DEMO remote maintenance

Loving

Crofts

Sykes

et al. 2014

Fusion Engineering and Design

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

Section: Remote Maintenance Durationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pre-conceptual design assessment of DEMO remote maintenance

Loving

Crofts

Sykes

et al. 2014

Fusion Engineering and Design

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…At JET, productivity varies considerably depending on the task, but a figure of about 70% is considered suitable for well-developed procedures with man-in-theloop control. These procedures include the tool deployment operations considered for DEMO [7].…”

Section: Efficiency Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The DEMO Operational Concept Description for 2012 [7] assumed that the divertor would require replacement every 2 years and the blanket would be replaced every other time the divertor was replaced.…”

Section: Optimum Duration Of Planned Maintenancementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Maintenance duration estimate for a DEMO fusion power plant, based on the EFDA WP12 pre-conceptual studies

Crofts

Harman

2014

Fusion Engineering and Design

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The erosion and high neutron flux in a fusion power plant results in the need for frequent remote replacement of the plasma facing components. This is a complex and time consuming remote handling operation and its duration directly affects the availability and therefore the commercial viability of the power plant.A tool is needed to allow the maintenance duration to be determined so that developments in component design can be assessed in terms of their effect on the maintenance duration. This allows the correct balance to be drawn between component cost and performance on the one hand and the remote handling cost and plant availability on the other.The work to develop this tool has begun with an estimate of the maintenance duration for a fusion power plant based on the EFDA DEMO WP12 pre-conceptual design studies [1]. The estimate can be readily adjusted for changes to the remote maintenance process resulting from design changes. The estimate uses data extrapolated from recorded times and operational experience from remote maintenance activities on the JET tokamak and other nuclear facilities.The Power Plant Conceptual Study from 2005 [2] proposes that commercial viability of a power plant would require an availability of 75% or above. Results from the maintenance estimate described in this paper suggest that this level of availability could be achieved for the planned maintenance using a highly developed and tested remote maintenance system, with a large element of parallel working and challenging but feasible operation times.

show abstract

“…Technology in RH has been studied a lot in Europe since the beginning of this century. The “Tile Carrier Transfer Facility” and Octant 1 boom for RH system, a heavy-weighted robot system to aid the manipulator to travel up in the vessel with an extended boom comprising five new links totaling 9.4 m in length, have been developed by the Joint European Torus (Loving et al , 2012). The articulated inspection arm (AIA) (Cordier et al , 2003; Perrot et al , 2005) in France and EAST articulated maintenance arm (EAMA; EAST: experimental advanced superconducting tokamak) (Shi et al , 2016) in China are both articulated flexible arms, which are equipped with a gripper or a camera and adopt flexible cable connections.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deformation modeling of remote handling EAMA robot by recurrent neural networks

Zhang

Song

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Purpose Remote handling (RH) manipulators have been widely studied for maintenance tasks in fusion reactors. Those tasks always require heavy load, high accuracy and large work space for manipulators. Traditionally, the maintenance of fusion devices always depends on manual RH. With the development of calculating ability, the intelligent automatic maintenance makes it possible for a fusion device instead of the previous manual operation. As the flexibility of arm and the deformation of manipulator will cause problems, which are mainly inaccuracy and lower efficiency. This paper aims to study an effective way to promote the arm behavior to solve these problems. Design/methodology/approach By making use of the experimental advanced superconducting tokamak articulated maintenance arm as a platform, a series of experiments is designed to measure errors of kinematics and to collect the database of the flexible arm. Through studying the data and the arm structure, recurrent neural network (RNN) method was adopted to estimate the deformation of flexible arm and eventually compensate deformation in robot control to achieve higher accuracy. Findings By means of delicate RNN modeling, errors of kinematics have been reduced to a smaller order than the RH mode. This intelligent maintenance method will also reduce complexity of operations in maintenance. Originality/value This paper presents the use of an artificial intelligent algorithm to solve a nonlinear deformation problem of the flexible arm. The results demonstrate that it is efficient in dealing with this problem in fusion application. The RNN’s successful application has also shown that intelligent algorithms can be widely applied in fusion maintenance.

show abstract

Development and application of high volume remote handling systems in support of JET and ITER

Cited by 19 publications

References 3 publications

Pre-conceptual design assessment of DEMO remote maintenance

Pre-conceptual design assessment of DEMO remote maintenance

Maintenance duration estimate for a DEMO fusion power plant, based on the EFDA WP12 pre-conceptual studies

Deformation modeling of remote handling EAMA robot by recurrent neural networks

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About