Abstract
Decommissioning challenges at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant are closely analogous to those encountered in other parts of the world. The proposal is to transfer and adapt existing high TRL technologies currently being deployed in an active cell at Sellafield, UK, and deployed in nuclear decommissioning environments in the USA.
The Barrnon Integrated Decommissioning System (BIDS) is an inherently radiation-tolerant hydraulically-powered mobile robotic system capable of performing a range of decommissioning tasks. Modular in concept and design, the system can be reconfigured for size and task-capability, for example the collection of fuel debris, the retrieval of sludges, granulates, zeolite and similar materials.
Subsets of the challenge are addressed and experimental results obtained indicate the achievability of deployment of a radiation-tolerant ROV and snake-arm robot capable of delivering tools and sensors into hard-to-access zones, semi-autonomous situational awareness, navigation, task characterization and prioritization in complex, unstructured environments; retrieval of liquid waste, sludges and granulates; VR-controlled size-reduction; object recognition in poorly lit and highly unstructured environments; radiation mapping; waste disposal decisions based on industry standard waste stream classification; and dynamic object handling. The integration of these capabilities in a scalable, modular and adaptable format is demonstrated and variant form-factor and task-capability versions of the system are mentioned.
