Volume 9 issue 1 Nuclear Future
March of the robots
Three Japanese companies have developed robots for use in inaccessible and contaminated spaces – and they are all likely to play a part cleaning up at Fukushima.
Hitachi – the ASTACO-SoRa Hitachi’s newly unveiled ASTACO-SoRa compact heavy-duty robot will start work removing rubble at the Fukushima site this year. ASTACO-SoRa’s compact 980 mm body means the robot can pass through narrow spaces, but its dual arms give it a reach of about 2.5m, giving it a wide degree of operating freedom. The arms are capable of lifting up to 150 kg each and can be equipped with a variety of tools including cutting and lifting tools and a camera. The tools, with the exception of the camera, can be replaced remotely. The robot is operated by remote control from a dedicated control
panel. Six onboard cameras allow operators to monitor the robot’s surroundings, while lasers are used to detect the width of the passageway the robot is moving through and any objects in its path. The unit carries its own radiation dosemeters. Unlike Toshiba’s recently announced battery operated tetrapod
‘walking’ robot, ASTACO-SoRa cannot climb stairs, but its diesel engines enable it to operate for up to 15 hours at a time.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) – the MEISTeR MHI have also unveiled a prototype robot designed to work in areas rendered inaccessible to human workers following accidents or disasters. The robot, named MEISTeR (Maintenance Equipment Integrated System of Telecontrol Robot) can trace its ancestry back to the RaBOT (Radiation-proof Robot) nuclear hazard response robot developed by MHI in response to a 1999 criticality accident at the Tokai-mura nuclear fuel processing facility. MEISTeR has been developed to be capable of undertaking work at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
Nuvia win Bulgarian job
Nuvia has been awarded the contract to provide the Programme Management Unit (PMU) to oversee the decommissioning of the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant in Bulgaria. Along with its Spanish partner Empresarios Agrupados
Internacinal, Nuvia will be responsible for managing site decommissioning and the design and construction of a waste disposal facility for Bulgaria’s State Enterprise for Radioactive Waste (SERAW). The €600m programme is part of the Kozloduy International
Decommissioning Support Fund (KIDSF) which is provided by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). This latest award builds on Nuvia’s work in Eastern Europe, including delivering various contracts for the EBRD and DECC.
MEISTeR boasts two arms which can be fitted with different tools
to enable it to carry out tasks such as carrying objects, drilling and opening and closing valves. Each arm can carry objects weighing up to 15kg, and can perform free movements similar to a human arm thanks to a 7-axis control system. MHI has developed a range of tools for the robot including drills, clamps and specimen sampling equipment. The 70cm-wide robot is able to collect core samples up to 7cm in length from concrete walls or floors to measure contamination levels. As well as its disaster support functions such as monitoring,
inspection and sample collecting, MEISTeR is versatile enough to be used for tasks such as moving obstacles, decontaminating walls and floors, cutting pipes and guard rails and light repair work. Like the heavy-duty ASTACO-SoRa robot, MEISTeR moves using
crawlers. It can climb slopes of up to 40 degrees and can also cope with steps up to 22cm. Unlike ASTACO-SoRa, which is diesel- powered, MEISTeR is battery-powered and can operate for two hours on a single charge.
Toshiba Corporation – the tetrapod robot Toshiba’s new robot integrates a camera and dosimeter and can investigate the condition of nuclear power plants by remote-controlled operation. The multiple joints of its legs are controlled by a dedicated movement algorithm that enables the robot to walk on uneven surfaces, avoid obstacles and climb stairs, securing access into areas that are difficult to reached for wheeled robots or crawlers. The robot also has a folding arm that can release a companion smaller robot that mounts a second camera. This can be launched from the main robot and positioned to take images of narrow places and any equipment behind them, and tubes and other places that are too small for the robot to enter. As with the MEISTeR robot, it is battery-powered, with the main robot able to operate continuously for two hours and the smaller robot for one hour.
During 2012 Nuvia received praise from EBRD for its work in Northern Russia and Kazakhstan. This contract, along
with Nuvia’s recent acquisition of Czech subsidiary Envinet, provides a base to grow the business in Eastern Europe. Further work is being targeted in Ukraine, Slovakia and Russia.
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