Nuclear Power
FUSION WORK A
NUCLEAR FASTER
Case study showing how advanced technology is speeding up MRO at the world’s largest nuclear fusion facility
s the world’s largest nuclear fusion power experiment, the JET (Joint European Torus) nuclear fusion tokamak is designed to
harness energy with the intention of furthering the development of fusion power generation. Fusion is based on the same principle that powers our sun and stars and is a key stepping stone towards a carbon-free world in energy production. Operated by the UK Atomic Energy
Authority’s (UKAEA) RACE (Remote Applications in Challenging Environments) department at Culham Science Centre near Oxford for the EuroFusion consortium of European fusion scientists, the project started in 1983 and is at the cutting edge of scientifi c development. T ird Dimension supports quality
control and maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) of JET with its profi le measurement systems. When the company originally started working with UKAEA,
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a third generation GapGun was installed onsite and used for inspection, in and out of the fusion rig, for many years. However, the GapGun, designed for handheld measurements, was upgraded in 2017 to the recently launched Vectro system. Vectro is not only based on the fi fth generation GapGun Pro technology, but was also designed to be installed as an integrated robotic inspection tool. Already, it has proven to deliver improvements to the speed and productivity of maintenance procedures for UKAEA. T is has been achieved with the authority’s MASCOT robot. During operation, the reactor runs for 30 seconds every half hour, with scientists from around the world eagerly awaiting their data and test results. T e tokamak has a heating capacity of around 40MW. To achieve power generation through nuclear fusion, plasma temperatures of over 100 million °C are required. T is makes the
reactor the hottest temperature in the solar system, hotter than the sun. Inside the reactor specially designed
tiles are densely packed to cover the inner area of the tokamak core and protect it from the extreme temperatures and hostile environment generated by the process. T ese castellated, beryllium-coated Inconel tiles are made in the USA at a cost of over US$700 per 100g Tiles are around 1cm square and are slightly off set at an angle to encourage the hot gas – known as plasma – in the core to circulate in a controlled manner. T is presents a challenge to ensure that the tiles are within a strictly controlled tolerance band. Any excessive amount of step or gap
between tiles increases the danger that plasma could cause tiles to detach or get damaged. T is would then mean expensive replacements and so inspection and the correct positioning carried out on these tiles is critical to the project. However, inevitably tiles do get damaged occasionally – often by plasma escaping from JET’s powerful magnetic
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