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Fusion Reactor Remote Access Vehicle
The Project
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is planned to be the next generation of Nuclear Fusion experimental reactor. This undertaking is huge and complex, and presents significant technological challenges. One of these challenges is to access the diverter plates in the torus, the core of the reactor, in order to remove and replace them, as will be periodically required during the reactor's operating life cycle. The diverter plates are irregular in shape and weigh several tons. In order to access the plates, a custom Manipulator / Heavy lift Vehicle is required.
The Solution
Numet's Remote Access Vehicle lays down sections of track, on which it then rides as its transportation platform. It navigates through a service duct in order to gain access the reactor torus. In order to gain entry to the duct it must cut out and remove access doors weighing up to 8 tons. Within the torus it accesses and removes or relocates the divertor plates, as required, and then reverses into entry procedure by removing track sections and repositioning and re-welding the access doors.
Numet's Remote Access Vehicle interfaces with and serves as an operating platform for a variety of tool-heads, manipulators and other devices used to accomplish these tasks.
Project Responsibility Highlights
Working in collaboration with SPAR Aerospace, Numet carried out detail design and manufacture of a full-scale prototype Vehicle to be used in a mock up of the ITER reactor torus, for proof of principle of the diverter plate manipulations requirements.
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