Industrial Robot: An International Journal

Emerald Article: Robots in the nuclear industry: a review of technologies and applications Robert Bogue

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To cite this document: Robert Bogue, (2011),"Robots in the nuclear industry: a review of technologies and applications", Industrial Robot: An International Journal, Vol. 38 Iss: 2 pp. 113 - 118 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/01439911111106327 Downloaded on: 25-04-2012 To copy this document: permissions@emeraldinsight.com This document has been downloaded 1120 times.

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Feature article

Robots in the nuclear industry: a review of technologies and applications

Robert Bogue
Okehampton, UK
Abstract Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the uses of robots in the nuclear power industry, with an emphasis on newer developments and applications. Design/methodology/approach Following an introduction to the nuclear industry, this paper considers robotic applications in two areas: test and inspection and decommissioning. A range of products, applications and case histories are discussed. Findings It is shown that robots are used widely for test and inspection and decommissioning tasks. The majority are highly specialised and are frequently produced by specialist nuclear engineering companies. The main robotic test and inspection techniques are visual inspection, ultrasonics and eddy current and the use of robots reects both the need to minimise operator exposure to radiation and the frequent difculties in accessing critical components such as pressure vessel welds and steam generator tubes. Key decommissioning uses include handling and size reduction of contaminated materials, cutting and demolition. Originality/value This paper provides details of inspection and decommissioning robots in the nuclear power industry. Keywords Robots, Nuclear energy industry, Nuclear reactors, Nuclear radiation, Inspection Paper type Technical paper

Introduction
A frequently voiced view in the early days of the robotics industry was that robots could play a major role in environments that posed a safety threat to humans. Such environments occur widely within the nuclear industries, where radioactive hazards frequently prevent or limit a human presence. The Nuclear Regulatory Commissions regulation 10 CFR 20 stipulates that a worker cannot receive a full body dose of more than 50 mSv per year and once this has been reached they must stop working immediately. This necessitates an increased number of workers but by using robots the number is minimised, which yields additional savings including a reduction in the quantity of protective equipment and clothing needed and a decreased administrative overhead. There are over 450 nuclear power plants in the world and 210 in Europe. They provide approximately one-third of the total electricity generated in the EU; a gure that is forecast to increase to 16 per cent by 2020 and 24 per cent by 2030. The USA presently generates approximately 20 per cent of its power in this manner and the gure in Japan is 25 per cent. In view of the concerns surrounding greenhouse gases arising from fossil-fuelled power generation, the nuclear
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option is undergoing something of a renaissance; the installed global capacity continues to rise and is presently around 400 GW (Figure 1). Further, while some countries, such as the UK, are presently decommissioning many of its old nuclear power stations, in some countries there are efforts to extend the operating lives of older plants. Handling heavy radioactive loads such as fuel rods or contaminated waste, conducting test, inspection, maintenance and repair operations in hot zones, decommissioning and other tasks have been performed with robots for many years but despite this, new robotic systems continue to be developed, often reecting the challenges posed by decommissioning and more stringent inspection requirements. This article reviews the uses of robots in the nuclear power industry with an emphasis on newer developments and applications.

Robotic test and inspection

Nuclear reactors are necessarily the subject to extensive test and inspection regimes. These are growing in importance as many facilities are reaching the end of their working lives; in 2009, 14 of the worlds operating nuclear power stations were 30 years old. Non-destructive testing (NDT) and visual inspection methods play a vital role in assessing the structural integrity of the critical components of nuclear power plants. On the one hand, detecting and sizing aws during periodic in-service inspection provides input data for fracture mechanics calculations and on the other, monitoring component and material conditions can help to assess degradation processes in terms of defect growth and thus contributes to possible early warning of component failure. Much robotic development activity was conducted during the late 1980s and 1990s and since then, all manner of often 113

Industrial Robot: An International Journal 38/2 (2011) 113 118 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited [ISSN 0143-991X] [DOI 10.1108/01439911111106327]

Robots in the nuclear industry: a review of technologies Robert Bogue

Industrial Robot: An International Journal Volume 38 Number 2 2011 113 118

Figure 1 Global nuclear power generating capacity

Nuclear power 400 Capacity (GW) 300 200 100 0 1980
Source: Wikipedia

Figure 2 Schematic of the SAFIRE inspection robot

4,000 3,000 2,000 1,000 Generation (TWh)

1990

2000

0 2010

highly application-specic systems have been developed, frequently by specialist nuclear engineering companies rather than by the mainstream robot manufacturers. These have met with varied degrees of success and R&D activity continues. The motivation for adopting robotic test and inspection largely reects two factors: the need to limit workers exposure to radiation and the often difcult access to critical components. In some instances, there are also economic benets. A selection of robotic test and inspection systems is considered below. The Pegasys robot, introduced in 2003 and produced by Westinghouse Electric, navigates using tube-walking technology and employs the eddy-current technique to inspect the tubes in a plants steam generator. It is also capable of small-scale plugging and in situ leak testing. Other Westinghouse nuclear industry robots include the T-crawler, ROSA III, FlangeBot and Genesis 2000. Steam generator tubes are also the target of Foster-Millers Consolidated Edison Combined Inspection and Lancing articulated robots which were developed in the late 1980s. These are inserted into the tube bundle and teleoperated, allowing visual inspection as well as contaminant sampling, foreign object retrieval and cleaning. In 2009, Ontario Power Generation (OPG) awarded a contract to UK-based OC Robotics to design and build a snake-arm robot for the visual inspection of complex pipework and structures within CANada Deuterium Uranium (CANDU) reactors. Dubbed SnakeArm Feeder Inspection Robotic Equipment (SAFIRE), the rst deployment on a CANDU unit was in 2010, where the robot, which is equipped with tip cameras, was successfully used to inspect the pipework, which contains primary coolant, in the upper feeder cabinet at OPGs Pickering Plant in Ontario. A schematic of SAFIRE is shown in Figure 2. Specic national and international regulations require reactor vessels to be inspected on a periodic basis with the aim of detecting cracks and to examine the welds, generally by using ultrasonic NDT methods. For example, Section XI of the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel code requires that the reactor vessels pressure retaining welds receive a 100 per cent volumetric examination at least every ten years. These operations pose several challenges. First, they need to be conducted underwater since the reactor is completely ooded and second, all of the equipment in the reactor has to be removed prior to inspection, meaning that it is out of service during the inspection period. This can cost up to $1 million or more per day. A third challenge is the often the poor accessibility of the welds; early reactor designs did not provide easy access to parts of the vessel. Several robotic systems have been developed to inspect reactor vessels by companies, which 114

include Mitsubishi, Siemens, B&W Nuclear Technology, PaR Nuclear and Westinghouse, amongst others. Many systems were extremely large and cumbersome. The Mitsubishi advanced ultrasonic testing machine is an example of an early system. It has a small base which is held to the vessel wall by four suction cups. It scans the vessel and then swims or moves to its next location using its eight wheels and six thrusters. One of todays manufacturers is WesDyne International, a wholly owned subsidiary of Westinghouse Electric Company. WesDynes Submersible Platform with ROSA End Effector Motion (SUPREEMTM) robotic system uses ultrasonics to examine PWR vessel shell and bottom head welds, bottommounted instrumentation nozzles, nozzle-to-shell welds from the shell surface and from the bore and nozzle-to-pipe welds. The system (Figure 3) consists of two platforms that are installed into the reactor vessel and two six-axis robots, one mounted to each platform. Inspections are performed in parallel with the two robots, allowing reactor vessel examinations to be completed in 3.5-4.5 days. End-effector changes are accomplished without removal of the robots from the platforms. The system can deliver a variety of ultrasonic and eddy-current probes and congurations to meet countryspecic requirements and has been used to examine reactor vessels in the UK, Sweden, China, South Korea and Germany, as well as the USA. In addition, the system is routinely used for reactor vessel head penetration examination in the USA and South Korea and bafe bolt examinations in the USA, France, Finland, Sweden and Belgium. The SUPREEM robot has also been licensed to inspection companies in Spain, China and South Korea. In recognition of the fact that different inspection techniques were used on PWRs in France, Germany and the USA, a study was conducted in 2001 to assess the feasibility of developing a common reactor vessel examination tool to service world markets. A plan was formulated to produce a Trans-world reactor vessel examination system (TWS) to support all three geographical markets. The system building blocks included a robot, a phased array ultrasonic test (PAUT) unit and an advanced analysis system. The robot design was completed in 2002 and was developed to support conventional ultrasonic test methods but with the exibility to

Robots in the nuclear industry: a review of technologies Robert Bogue

Industrial Robot: An International Journal Volume 38 Number 2 2011 113 118

Figure 3 The SUPREEMe robot performs a bafe bolt inspection

Note: A technique that was qualified by Westinghouse subsidiary WesDyne International in 1998 Source: Reproduced by permission of Westinghouse Electric Company LLC, @2010 Westinghouse Electric Company LLC

the shape of the vertical track installed at the plant. The testing is conducted with a PAUT unit whereby the angles of the ultrasonic beam can be electronically steered, thus replacing several conventional search units with just one scanning system. The array examines welds and adjacent areas for longitudinal and transverse defects at the same time and also scans the inner radii of nozzles for defects. The system allows BWR pressure vessels to be inspected in ten to 12 days, about half the time needed in the past, and was rst used in 2001 on the Krummel Plant in Germany. A need exists for improved techniques to inspect the welded, austenitic steel nozzle sections in reactors, as these are critical components which can be susceptible to rapid crack growth due to thermal fatigue and stress corrosion. A two-year EU project, NozzleInspect, was set up in 2009 to address this need and involves seven organisations from six European countries. The aim is to develop an autonomous robot which will carry a novel ultrasonic phased array probe which, combined with a unique 3D beam steering capability, will enable the entire volume of the weld to be inspected in a single operation. It is anticipated that the robot will make use of a vacuum-suction locomotion system and an advanced navigation system will allow it to follow the complex weld prole. Ultimately, this development should reduce inspection times, improve defect detection and sizing and also minimise the risk of radiation exposure by the workforce. Robotic pipe crawlers are used in this industry, both to conduct test and inspection tasks and for a range of decommissioning functions. A large robotic crawler, developed in the USA by the Savannah River National Laboratory, is shown in Figure 4. Many crawlers are equipped with video cameras while others exploit NDT techniques to detect defects such as cracks, pitting or corrosion. For example, German Inspector Systems Rainer Hitzel GmbH produces a range of robotic crawlers equipped with Figure 4 Robotic pipe crawler developed by the Savannah River National Laboratory

change over to PAUT technology. A three-legged base spans the reactor vessel to provide a solid anchor for the six degreeof-freedom robotic arm. Motor-driven actuators extend and react against the vessel wall with more than 1,000 pounds of thrust to eliminate the possibility of the base slipping. The robotic arm comprises waist, shoulder, elbow, roll, pitch and yaw precision joints. Shell inspections rely primarily on the waist joint to sweep the ultrasonic transducers circumferentially around the vessel. The full dexterity of the robotic arm is used to locate transducers to inspect the nozzle inner radius and nozzle bores, including the deeper welds. The TWS is capable of completing an inspection in 3.5-4.5 days. Somewhat similar thinking has been applied to the in-service testing requirements of boiling water reactor (BWR) pressure vessels. Tests are usually performed from the outside surface of the vessel using manipulators mounted on vertical tracks in the annulus between the vessel wall and the biological shield. Traditionally, each generation of BWR required its own dedicated manipulator with arms and scanning equipment specically designed for the vessel geometry. This problem has been overcome through the development of a robotic inspection system by intelligeNDT, formerly a Framatome ANP subsidiary but now part of the international Areva Group. The heart of this system is a pivoting robotic arm mounted on a carriage. The ve degrees of freedom enable it to cover all of the regions to be examined and to perform all of the motions of conventional manipulators. Only the carriage has to be adapted to match 115

Source: Savannah River National Laboratory

Robots in the nuclear industry: a review of technologies Robert Bogue

Industrial Robot: An International Journal Volume 38 Number 2 2011 113 118

lasers, ultrasonic or eddy-current sensors which are used to inspect the welded seams and monitor the thickness of piping systems in nuclear power plant. In 2008, an Inspector Systems Inspector 6000 video and laser inspection robot was equipped with an eddy-current probe and used during the routine maintenance of the German Unterweser Power Plant. The system was used to inspect rubber-lined cooling water pipelines and was able to detect reductions in wall thickness due to corrosion, erosion or pitting and to distinguish between internal and external defects. In addition, some robotic crawlers have been developed which are able to operate on vertical surfaces. These continue to be the topic of research but a commercial example is the NanoMag, produced by Inuktum. Originally designed for use on the top of PWRs, this robot employs high-strength rare earth magnets which allow it to operate in any orientation on ferromagnetic surfaces such as tanks and pipes. It is equipped with forward and rear-facing cameras which relay images to a remote operator. The importance of robotic inspection to older nuclear power plant was well illustrated by recent work on the Vermont Yankee BWR. Entergy, which owns and operates Yankee, had applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to extend the plants operating license for another 20 years, from 2012 to 2032. The steam dryer, which is used to extract moisture from steam produced in the BWR before being fed to the turbine, had received particular scrutiny because of cracks found in its structure. While Yankee management asserted that the cracks do not affect the dryers integrity, groups opposed to the power plants extended operation had expressed concern that the cracks could become larger, resulting in fragmentation. In the past, a full-scale examination of the dryer required it to be removed from the top of the reactor, a procedure that required plant shutdown. In-service inspection was conducted using cameras mounted on long poles but this was problematic as access was not possible to some parts of the dryer. Two robotic systems designed and built by Entergy and Areva are now being used for improved inspection of the dryer. One of these, equipped with a telescoping mast and camera, travels on a rail and trolley system and is used to test the outer diameter of the dryer. The inner diameter is inspected with an underwater crawler robot, also with a telescoping mast and camera. The rst system is used to inspect 213 separate welds and components while the underwater system inspects a further 253 welds and components. Advantages common to both systems include improved safety, higher inspection quality, parallel inspection capability and greatly reduced radiation exposure. An annual reduction in radiation exposure of 3.6 person-rem is expected from the use of these systems. Another example of the use of robotics at ageing power plant is the inspection and repair work conducted at Ringhals 1, an 830 MW BWR located on the west coast of Sweden. The Swedish Government gave the Swedish nuclear utilities permission to continue operating the plant on the condition that it, and other reactors, were operated to the highest possible safety standards and were subjected to regular independent inspections. During the repair of a leak located close to the control-rod drive mechanism (CRDM) pipe in a section called the SCRAM nozzle[1], two versions of OC Robotics snake-arm robots were used to view the site of the repair and to manipulate components in what was an extremely inaccessible location (Figure 5). The Inspection 116

Figure 5 The snake-arm robot in use at the Ringhals 1 power plant

Arm robot has ten segments and a total of 23 degrees of freedom including a two-axis wrist. The task was to introduce cameras around the back of the CRDM pipes to gain a closeup view of the worksite. The Manipulation Arm has eight degrees of freedom with a further three available from a wiredriven wrist. The arm and wrist axes are controlled by 16 motors and actuators. It was used during several stages of the repair process and also delivered an inspection device that took a 3608 radiographic image of each weld.

Decommissioning
Despite the growth in nuclear capacity, during the next two decades hundreds of nuclear facilities such as power plant, submarines, fuel processing plants and military facilities will come to the end of their working lives and require decommissioning. In many instances, many hundreds of tons of contaminated concrete and steel need to be reduced in size and manipulated. The primary purpose of robotics in decommissioning is to reduce the radioactive dose to which workers are exposed. The more emphasis that is placed on immediate decontamination and dismantling (DECON), as opposed to safe storage, the more likely it is that robotics will be required. There are many situations where, owing to the degree of radiation and the very long half-lives of the radioactive materials involved, robotics is the only feasible option. However, most current robotic systems employ virtually no autonomy or even programmed motion; invariably there is a human in the control loop and this is likely to continue. Most systems employ simple remote control, teleoperation or master/slave manipulation and generally fall into one of three broad categories: relatively contly, customised solutions to specic problems; general purpose equipment, modied for this use; and systems produced from off the shelf components such as hydraulic manipulator arms. An example of a custom solution was the system used for the DECON demonstrator project at the UKs Windscale advanced gas-cooled reactor. Immediate demolition of the reactor vessel would have resulted in dose exposure of 1 Sv/hr, meaning that workers would have reached their permitted annual dose in 20 min. The system consisted of an extendable

Robots in the nuclear industry: a review of technologies Robert Bogue

Industrial Robot: An International Journal Volume 38 Number 2 2011 113 118

mast with a six degree-of-freedom manipulator at the end. By using this system, dose rates have been kept to a total of 17 mSv per worker over the six years of the project, which has produced 22 tons of low-level waste and 10 tons of intermediate-level waste. A truly innovative robotic system dubbed the Reactorsaurus is presently being developed by Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd Weighing in at 75 tons, this is a large traversing carriage which incorporates a set of two remotely operated manipulators with robotic arms reaching 16 m down into the reactor vessel. Activated from a central control room, these arms are able to operate an array of size reduction and handling tools, such as diamond wire and disks, hydraulic shears and oxy/propane and plasma cutters. There is an integral vision system with six radiation tolerant cameras and four microphones which will relay images and sound back to the control room. It will take around two years to construct and is expected to enter service in 2013. Another example of a customised system was produced by SA Technology for segmenting the reactor vessel at the American Rancho Seco plant. The design consists of a center-mounted square tube, located inside the reactor, which supports a six degree-of-freedom manipulator with the capability to position accurately and rigidly hold a small waterjet cutting head. The manipulator assembly consists of six axes: a vertical travel along the length of the upright centre tube (z-axis), a main rotational axis about the centre of the upright tube (rotation of 5408), a shoulder pivot joint (rotation 1808), a manipulator forearm extension (travel 18 in.), a wrist rotate axis (rotation 3608), and a wrist pivot axis (rotation 1808). Two pan-tilt-zoom cameras are mounted on the arm to view the position of the joints for cutting head placement and during the cutting process and monitors on the control panels allow operators to view the cutting operations. A post-cut, end-effector suction tool was designed to remove excess abrasive and water from the reactor vessel pit after cutting is complete. The system has been used to cut carbon steel vessels with thicknesses of up to 13 in. (33 cm). Examples of general purpose devices are the Brokk range of remotely operated demolition products. Produced by Brokk AB of Sweden, these are being used widely for all manner of nuclear power plant decommissioning tasks (Figures 6 and 7). They are sufciently rugged for demolition work yet small enough to work inside buildings and are often electrically powered through an umbilical cable, making indoor operation easier. A wide range of end-effector tools such as shears, grapples and crushers are available for most demolition tasks which include sorting radioactive waste, demolishing hot cells and waste bunkers and removing concrete from cooling ponds. During the decommissioning of the Dounreay reactor (Figure 8), a Brokk robot was used to demolish the 32 reinforced concrete plinths that separated the tanks that once held radioactive liquids. The robots will also enter the cells and pond, where more than 10,000 spent fuel elements were dissolved and reprocessed before the plant was closed in 1996, to cut up and package the vessels and pipes. A Brokk unit was also used during the demolition of the Dounreay experimental criticality laboratory (Figure 9). The German nuclear engineering specialist Nukem has produced a number of robotic products aimed specically at decommissioning tasks. For example, the Artisan 100 is a highpower hydraulic manipulator which is designed for handling and size reduction operations in highly radioactive environments. It has six axes and can accurately handle 100-kg loads in 117

Figure 6 Brokk 180 unit cutting pipes with steel shears in Japan

Source: Brokk AB

Figure 7 The Brokk B90 unit

Source: Brokk AB

Figure 8 The Dounreay site

Source: Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd and NDA

Robots in the nuclear industry: a review of technologies Robert Bogue

Industrial Robot: An International Journal Volume 38 Number 2 2011 113 118

Figure 9 Robotic demolition of the Dounreay experimental criticality laboratory

Figure 10 Laser scabbing attachment on the arm of a six-axis robot

Source: Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd and NDA

either robotic or telerobotic mode. The Nukem Neater 660 is a radiation-tolerant six degree-of-freedom robot with a range of 2 m and a payload of 25 kg. An interesting robotic application is the laser scabbing of contaminated concrete and cutting of pipework. This was successfully demonstrated in the UK by TWI Ltd in 2010. A six-axis robot was equipped with a 5-kW bre laser, a debris removal system and a vision system. With a travel speed of 200 mm/min, a removal depth of .10 mm was achieved, which means that a 10 10 m wall could be treated in 180 h, with 1.3 m3 of material being removed. The laser scabbing attachment is shown in Figure 10. A somewhat similar robotic system has been used during the decommissioning of the German Greifswald nuclear power plant where around 2.3 million square meters of concrete surfaces on the oors, walls and ceilings of the reactor blocks have to be decontaminated. A KUKA KR 125 six-axis, jointed-arm robot has been equipped with an array of 32 pneumatically powered carbide rams which are capable of stripping up to 10 m2 of concrete per hour. The system can strip concrete, masonry and brick, as well as plaster, anti-contamination paints and other wall coatings and is equipped with an automated tool changing system. It has the exibility to strip walls with almost any geometry and from a single location it can process a surface 4 m high and 5 m wide. The system is also equipped with a radiation sensor and following the initial stripping it uses this to verify that any remaining contamination is below the statutory limit values. If the limits are exceeded, the robot automatically changes its tool and reworks the relevant areas. This is repeated until the surface is completely decontaminated and may legally be demolished.

Source: Courtesy of TWI

Conclusions
In addition to the two areas of application considered here, the nuclear power industry uses robots during plant construction and commissioning, in maintenance operations and in waste disposal. As such, it is clearly a signicant user of robots, albeit most often highly specialised units produced in relatively small quantities. With the anticipated construction of new plant in many territories, combined with the massive decommissioning task ahead, prospects are strong for innovative robotic solutions in this industry.

Note
1 SCRAM stands for Safety Control Rod Axe Man. The reputed etymology is interesting: Norman Hilberry was the rst SCRAM. He was part of Enrico Fermis team that built the rst reactor and his task was to cut a rope with a remans axe to drop a control rod into the pile if he saw a blue glow due to Cherenkov radiation.

Corresponding author
Robert Bogue can be contacted at: robbogue@aol.com

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