Robotics Technologies for Decommissioning of Fukushima Daiichi - 17077
- Hitachi, Ltd., Research and Development Group (Japan)
- Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy (Japan)
The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (NPS) of Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) was the site of a severe nuclear accident after the 2011 Off the Pacific coast of Tohoku Earthquake and subsequent tsunami. Extensive structural damage occurred in the NPS facilities, including such environments as the reactor buildings and the primary containment vessels (PCVs). These are high radiation areas, having underwater areas, narrow spaces and so on. It is necessary to determine the extent of contamination and the location of debris to plan decommissioning operations. Survey targets in the past few years have been focused on inspections of the basement of the reactor buildings and the inside of the PCVs. Human operators cannot access these environments and work in them directly. Therefore, remotely operated robots and measurement technologies are needed to carry out various operations. For underwater surveys, we have developed a submersible crawling swimming robot that can avoid obstacles and inspect wide areas as it moves around. A shape-changing robot has been developed for passing through narrow spaces and crawling on rough floors. An ultrasonic imaging method combined with convex scanning and a divergent beam has been proposed to visualize environments in turbid water. In this paper, we describe details of the two survey robots and the underwater imaging method. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- WM Symposia, Inc., PO Box 27646, 85285-7646 Tempe, AZ (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 22794492
- Report Number(s):
- INIS-US-19-WM-17077; TRN: US19V0169038711
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: WM2017 Conference: 43. Annual Waste Management Symposium, Phoenix, AZ (United States), 5-9 Mar 2017; Other Information: Country of input: France; 8 refs.; available online at: http://archive.wmsym.org/2017/index.html
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
A Frozen Soil Barrier to Control Groundwater Inflow into Damaged Reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station - 16613
Autonomous Radiation Survey Inside Contaminated Buildings at Fukushima Daiichi with the Riser UAV - 18299