Overview of Remote Handling Equipment Used for the NPP A1 Decommissioning - 12141
- VUJE, Inc., Okruzna 5, 918 64 Trnava (Slovakia)
- IAEA, Wagramer Strasse 5, P.O.Box 100, A-1400 Vienna (Austria)
- ZTS VVU Kosice, Inc., Juzna Trieda 95, 041 24 Kosice (Slovakia)
The first Czechoslovak NPP A1 was in operation from 1972 to 1977 and it was finally shutdown due to an accident (level 4 according to the INES). The presence of radioactive, toxic or hazardous materials limits personnel access to facilities and therefore it is necessary to use remote handling technologies for some most difficult characterization, retrieval, decontamination and dismantling tasks. The history of remote handling technologies utilization started in nineties when the spent nuclear fuel, including those fuel assemblies damaged during the accident, was prepared for the transport to Russia. Subsequent significant development of remote handling equipment continued during implementation of the NPP A1 decommissioning project - Stage I and ongoing Stage II. Company VUJE, Inc. is the general contractor for both mentioned stages of the decommissioning project. Various remote handling manipulators and robotics arms were developed and used. It includes remotely controlled vehicle manipulator MT-15 used for characterisation tasks in hostile and radioactive environment, special robust manipulator DENAR-41 used for the decontamination of underground storage tanks and multi-purposes robotics arms MT-80 and MT-80A developed for variety of decontamination and dismantling tasks. The heavy water evaporator facility dismantling is the current task performed remotely by robotics arm MT-80. The heavy water evaporator is located inside the main production building in the room No. 220 where loose surface contamination varies from 10 Bq/cm{sup 2} to 1x10{sup 3} Bq/cm{sup 2}, dose rate is up to 1.5 mGy/h and the feeding pipeline contained liquid RAW with high tritium content. Presented manipulators have been designed for broad range of decommissioning tasks. They are used for recognition, sampling, waste retrieval from large underground tanks, decontamination and dismantling of technological equipments. Each of the mentioned fields claims specific requirements on design of manipulator, their operation and control systems as well as tools of manipulators. Precise planning of decontamination and dismantling tasks is necessary for its successful performance by remotely controlled manipulator. The example of the heavy water evaporator demonstrates typical procedure for decommissioning of contaminated technological equipment by remotely controlled manipulators - planning of decommissioning tasks, preparatory tasks, modification of applied tools and design of specific supporting constructions for manipulator and finally decontamination and dismantling themselves. Due to the particularly demanding conditions in highly contaminated A1 NPP, a team of experts with special know-how in the field of decommissioning has grown up, and unique technological equipment enabling effective and safe work in environment with a high radiation level has been developed. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- WM Symposia, 1628 E. Southern Avenue, Suite 9-332, Tempe, AZ 85282 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 22293448
- Report Number(s):
- INIS-US-14-WM-12141; TRN: US14V1102114972
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: WM2012: Waste Management 2012 conference on improving the future in waste management, Phoenix, AZ (United States), 26 Feb - 1 Mar 2012; Other Information: Country of input: France; 5 refs.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
42 ENGINEERING
CONTROL SYSTEMS
DECOMMISSIONING
DECONTAMINATION
DESIGN
DOSE RATES
HAZARDOUS MATERIALS
HEAVY WATER
MANIPULATORS
REMOTE HANDLING
SPENT FUELS
SURFACE CONTAMINATION
TRITIUM
UNDERGROUND STORAGE
WASTE RETRIEVAL