DETAILS OF OPERATIONS PERFORMED BY THE REMOTE CONTROL ROBOT (CONCEPT) TO THE HORIZONTAL FUEL CHANNEL DURING DECOMMISSIONING PHASE OF NUCLEAR REACTOR CALANDRIA STRUCTURE. PART I: OUTSIDE OPERATIONS

Abstract

The authors contribution to this paper is to present a concept solution of a remote control robot (RCR) used for the horizontal fuel channels pressure tube decommissioning in the CANDU nuclear reactor. The authors highlight in this paper, few details of geometry, operations, constraints by kinematics and dynamics of the robot movement outside of the reactor fuel channel. Outside operations performed has as the main steps of dismantling process the followings: positioning front of Calandria structure at the fuel channel to be decommissioned, coupling and locking to the End Fitting (EF), sorting and storage extracted items in the safe container. All steps are performed in automatic mode. The remote control robot (RCR) represents a safety system controlled by sensors and has the capability to analyze any error registered and decide next activities or abort the outside decommissioning procedure in case of any risk rise in order to ensure the environmental and workers protection.

Keywords

• Decommissioning
• CANDU reactor
• fuel channel
• radiation protection