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Page added on August 8, 2015
A robotic future for nuclear fusion
In May, it was announced that Amec Foster Wheeler will develop a remote handling system for the ITER fusion reactor in France. The seven-year robotics contract will focus on a system that can handle hazardous and sensitive materials remotely, all with the aim of demonstrating the feasibility of nuclear fusion as a future power source.
Amec Foster Wheeler was awarded the contract by Fusion for Energy (F4E), the EU organisation responsible for Europe’s contribution to ITER, which is the world’s biggest fusion energy project. The company’s system, officially known as the Neutral Beam Cell Remote Handling System, is the largest nuclear robotics contract awarded by F4E to a UK company to date.
Amec Foster Wheeler will lead the project with support from a host of other specialists, including the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (the UK’s national fusion research laboratory), Reel SAS of France and Walischmiller Engineering GmbH of Germany.
As the project begins to move through the concept phase along its lengthy path, Jon Montgomerie, chief engineer at the European Remote Handling Alliance (ERHA), an Amec Foster Wheeler co-operative contracting arrangement, discusses the origin of the idea and how it will work in practice.
Gary Peters: Can you talk me through Amec Foster Wheeler’s expertise in the area of using robotics for energy and nuclear fusion?
Jon Montgomerie: The nuclear fission industry has used remote handling in one form or another right from its inception, as it was known from the start that there were some situations where materials handling requirements could not be met safely using a human operator with conventional tools. Gradually, technology has evolved to better meet these needs, starting with simple tongs operated through a ball joint in a shielding wall up to the electronically controlled robotic devices we are developing today. This specialised sphere of expertise can be called nuclear remote handling (RH) or robotics, and we have a number of experts in this field with expertise and past experience of nuclear RH work.
The company itself has delivered quite a few projects over the years in nuclear RH, with a rise in recent years partly fuelled by an increase in remote interventions needed by one of our major clients to address emergent issues, often age-related, with its fleet of nuclear power stations. In recent years, Amec Foster Wheeler’s nuclear business has had an average turnover in Nuclear RH of around £5m per year, so the Neutral Beam Remote Handling System contract, at €70m over seven years, represents a major step forward for us.
GP: How did the premise of a remote handling system for the ITER fusion reactor in France come about?
JM: ITER will, in very simple terms, recreate the reaction that is going on in the centre of the sun held within a vacuum and constrained by large magnetic fields. This creates an environment that personnel cannot access, and therefore remote handling systems need to be created to allow all sorts of tasks to be performed. The Neutral Beam Remote Handling System is one of these systems. Concepts for these various systems have been developed for a number of years by the scientific community, and we are now at the stage of the ITER project of taking these concept designs and making them real, so that they can actually be built.
GP: Digging deeper into the specifics, how will the system be operated?
JM: Over the projected seven-year development and delivery phase, ERHA will need to involve hundreds of people with skills ranging from those of the project director through to the specialist engineers with skills in robotics, lifting systems, specialist cutting and other tool systems, control system, vision systems, and so on, right through to the craftsmen delivering the precision manufacturing necessary to build this type of equipment and then safely and successfully install and commission it.
Seventy-five academics have called for a larger role for nuclear in the future energy mix.
Once installed and commissioned, the system will be operated by ITER staff, trained by us, working from a control room safely shielded from the environment of the Neutral Beam cell, and about 100m away from it. All operations will be not only carried out remotely but also viewed remotely; that is to say, there will be no direct view through windows or whatever. Monitoring operations will be entirely by CCTV and other electronic monitoring systems.
Interestingly, from our past experience we know that even the humble microphone can be a hugely valuable instrument in allowing RH operators to understand what the equipment is doing and how it is performing, but there will of course be many more sophisticated instruments generating data to guide the operators in their work.
GP: What will be the core responsibilities of the system?
JM: As the name implies, the Neutral Beam Remote Handling System works in the Neutral Beam Cell, providing for all maintenance activities to be carried out from – and including – the opening of the shielded covers on the neutral beam lines.
Each of these lines – there will be three or four – is around the size of a small bus, and is crammed with complex equipment working at up to a million volts. Provision needs to be made to disconnect and change out the various modules inside that allow the beam lines to work. Essentially it must be possible to completely strip out the entire contents of the beam line vessels to an empty shell and then re-assemble completely, all without any man-access to the cell.
Common to most other nuclear RH systems, it must also be possible to recover from any postulated fault scenario, again without any ‘man access’ to the cell, so each machine needs systems designed into it for recovery, and methods for remotely changing over to them so that a failed piece of equipment can be retrieved remotely and repaired.
GP: What benefits will it provide?
JM: Essentially it would be impossible to operate the Neutral Beam Cell without the RH system, and without the NB cell it would be impossible to operate ITER.
There are several other systems in the plant that have a similar essential nature, in that the areas they work in are entirely non-accessible, yet contain components and systems vital to the functioning of the ITER plant.
GP: What challenges exist when trying to develop a remote handling system for such a task?
JM: It is obviously our prime intention to utilise existing technological building blocks wherever possible – we don’t want to re-invent the wheel! All the same, there are some specific technical issues that are new or at least somewhat novel, and an early part of the work is to identify these and carry out the necessary R&D to convert these ‘technical uncertainties’ into tried and tested technology that we can deploy with confidence. This is particularly crucial for ITER because, to a greater extent than most other nuclear plants, it will be hugely dependant on its Remote Handling systems, some of which – if they failed – could bring the whole plant to a standstill.
In particular, there are a number of tools that need to be developed for the robots to deploy, for the remote cutting, welding and inspecting of pipework, all to a very high standard. Remote cutting and welding have been done before, but the challenges of difficult access, constrained space, limited connectivity and extremely high standards to be achieved mean that these tools will need to be absolutely cutting-edge.
On a macro scale, the deployment of the robot systems and their tools requires deployment machines with reach distances and number of degrees of freedom that are rare even with relatively simple RH systems. These systems must reach a long way into awkward spaces and achieve a very high quality of work; all in all, a fairly challenging nuclear environment.
GP: How will the remote handling system help demonstrate the technical feasibility of nuclear fusion as a future power source?
JM: The feasibility of fusion as an energy source will be verified by the functioning of the ITER experiment itself, and ultimately proven by the follow-up plant DEMO, which will be the world’s first prototype Fusion Power Station. But, as noted before, certain aspects of the functioning of the ITER plant would be impossible without the sophisticated RH systems we are working on, and as such they are part of that proof that fusion can, in the end, provide a sustainable energy source for the future.
GP: How important are developments such as these to nuclear fusion and indeed energy as a whole?
JM: The successful functioning of these RH systems is vital to the operation of the ITER plant itself, and their successors will be equally vital to the operation of DEMO, and hence to the very future of fusion as a viable energy source.
More broadly, since the working environments are similar, there is huge potential for the technology, knowledge and experience generated on these projects to transfer back into the fission industry from where almost all the expertise originally came.
The more extreme challenges posed by the ITER Remote Handling systems is forcing nuclear RH technology forward at a much accelerated pace, making new approaches then available to [the] wider nuclear industry, potentially improving efficiency and effectiveness in all kinds of other applications. We already have a small R&D contract in support of Fukushima, and this is just one example, albeit a well-known one, of where improvements in nuclear remote handling and robotics could have huge benefits.
15 Comments on "A robotic future for nuclear fusion"
Rodster on Sat, 8th Aug 2015 11:03 am
Robots and AI are the way of the future. A Chinese mfg company recently installed robots to replace a majority of it’s 650 workers. Management was astounded (shouldn’t surprise anyone) that their output went from 8,000 to 21,000 pieces with robots. The defect rate of the human workers was around 25% and dropped to less than 5% with the robots.
The company plans to only have 20 humans on the payroll.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-01/chinese-company-replaces-humans-robots-production-skyrockets-mistakes-disappear
Davy on Sat, 8th Aug 2015 11:31 am
Rod robots and AI have zero future beyond a narrow window IMHO. Once the economy goes into serious decline there will be little if any ability and or need to invest in them. They are overly complex, energy intensive to produce, and economically redundant in a deflationary setting. They will not go away but their widespread use will decline significantly as economic and social decay sets in.
Newfie on Sat, 8th Aug 2015 12:19 pm
Controlled fusion power plants are a pipe dream.
National Jester on Sat, 8th Aug 2015 4:51 pm
Read Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut if you want to see a plausible future with robotic manufacturing. What will people do for a living when their labor isn’t needed by society. How do we manage that socially and economically?
Davy on Sat, 8th Aug 2015 8:33 pm
Sure, Jester, these people you mentioned will starve because their robots will be stiff from lack of power and rusting and corroding from exposure. That is how nature will manage fools who believe in a techno-future.
There is no future for AI and robotics. It is just more of the delusional thinking of techno-exceptionalist. Our overly large ape brain has always been deeply into fantasy, superstition, and magic. Even now with all our knowledge we still prefer these human fictions. We are a cursed species to have so much potential yet so handicapped by delusional thinking.
Makati1 on Sat, 8th Aug 2015 9:35 pm
LMAO!!
Nony on Sun, 9th Aug 2015 10:50 pm
pork barrel government contract
MrNoItAll on Tue, 11th Aug 2015 1:50 am
My guess is that there are a number of individuals in the exclusive PTB club that actually believe that nuclear fusion is a viable technology, and that with a little more time and a lot more investment, fusion energy might just “come to the rescue” and preserve their prestigious positions in this world.
It wasn’t long after Jimmy Carter informed America and the world in one of his speeches that America (and the world) faced a dire national security issue in regards to energy (or lack thereof) that the first nuclear fusion project was secretly funded and the dream was born.
Through all these years since then when TPTB must have known that energy issues related to oil depletion were creeping up fast, my guess is that they have placed their hopes and aspirations in the development of viable nuclear fusion energy and the accompanying combination of all the other alternative energy sources.
They just couldn’t accept that the end of the oil age was also the end of BAU and the end of their cushy reign over planet earth. They placed their faith in the seemingly god-like powers that science and technological advancement promised. All they needed was time and investment.
They frittered away the years believing in an energy source that has proven to be too illusive. No doubt, through all those years, the scientists and academics sucking on the tit of large endowments and research grants kept telling their masters that yes, it was possible, it could be done, just more money and more time was needed.
And here we are, very near the end of the road, with TPTB still doing everything possible to buy more time, to keep BAU patched together and limping along for a little while longer. One has to wonder if their reason for keeping it going is because they’re still believers, thinking that if they can just find that one illusive subatomic particle or if they can just conduct the right experiment, then it will all come together and the world (and their sorry asses) will be saved!
Fat chance of that. Huge egos, a sense of destiny, too much faith in technological capability and a fallible reliance on their own invincibility lead them and us to this sorry point in history.
Big dreams die hard. Sooner or later we all have to face reality. When the oil that is worth extracting is gone, which it almost is relatively speaking, then there will be no replacement. There will be no nuclear fusion.
If the human race is ever destined to achieve a sustainable high-tech civilization and travel to the stars and beyond, it will be far in the future after humanity has gone through several or more evolutions to a higher level of intellect, leaving the likes of Plantagenet, Nony, Boat and several others in the garbage can of history.
Jon M Montgomerie on Mon, 17th Aug 2015 4:56 am
Wow, “Davy” you have some pretty negative comments on here, and I think I probably need to clear a few things up for you.
Firstly, there was no mention of AI in the article, and indeed there is no intention to use AI in the system, so any opinions / concerns about the viability, applicability or future of using AI are entirely irrelevant to the article. As it happens, I personally don’t believe we’ll ever achieve AI in the sense that sci-fi movies portray it (such as “I Robot”), and that would probably be just as well, but all that is just my opinion and even less relevant to the article really!
Secondly, the use of robotics in this context and form is actually already well established, the nuclear fission industry has been using powered remotely controlled devices for decades – it was already a well-established field of expertise when I first got into it in 1983!
Thirdly, the use of robotics in this way is not always an “expensive option” that will be dispensed with when money gets tight, to be replaced with human intervention. In many instances, not just in the nuclear industry, human intervention is not possible; this can be due to any one or combination of these:
1. The nature of the task is beyond the capabilities of a human being (e.g. high loads)
2. The lack of space makes it impossible for a human form to enter the working area (e.g. down pipelines)
3. The hazardous environment means that human access is either unacceptable (health risk or likely injury) or completely untenable (death would result before the job was finished!), such as high temperatures, deep water, high radiation doses, poisonous gases, etc. etc.
There are plenty of applications where one or more of these factors will continue to make it necessary for a machine to carry out remotely the work that cannot (or should not) be carried out by a human being, and such a machine is defined as a robot; the cost of the robotic solution will continue to be justified by the benefit of getting the job done.
Anyone who thinks that human activity will be so blighted that we will be stopping use of robots (by this definition) any time soon has such a negative outlook on life that they probably need professional help …
Jon M Montgomerie on Mon, 17th Aug 2015 5:21 am
And another thing, @ MrNoItAll:
Research on nuclear fusion as a source of civil power (as opposed to a weapon) actually started 25 years before Jimmy Carter’s presidency even began. I suspect your perspective may be rather USE-centric, and lacking a global view.
No new sub-atomic particle needs to be discovered for fusion to work as an energy source, and short bursts of fusion have been successfully achieved in various experimental devices many times over many years – the remaining issues are those of practicality in keeping the reaction sustained so that a steady stream of energy can be delivered, which issues ITER is intended to address. ITER will already be a net energy generator, but not on a continuous, industrial basis, since it is a development facility rather than a power station.
Some technologies develop faster than others as the challenges turn out to be easier or harder to overcome. Manned flight may have developed hugely over the 20th century, but attempts to achieve it failed consistently for many centuries before that. A similar story applies to machines for calculus – the abacus dates back nearly 5,000 years, but of course it’s less than a century since we finally started making efficient computers that could do significantly more than an abacus.
Presumably your pseudonym was chosen in irony …?
Davy on Mon, 17th Aug 2015 5:38 am
Jon, get out of your dellusional exceptionalist attitude that humans have a divine manifest destiny to progress with technology and development. Where is it scentifically written that man should and will progress. More accurately in scientific studies it has been abundantly clear we are in a time of great climate, environmental, and systematic stress. We are progressing towards a collapse not progress.
As for robotics and rudimentary current AI their future follows closely along with the future of our fossil fuel culture. Our culture is a petro culture built upon systematic complexity and energy intensity. The systematic complexity is non-resilient per the dangers of disruptions to our unsustainable petroculture.
Robotics are great and amazing and as long as we have a petro culture that will continue. The nature of the size of the industry and usefulness of robotics gives them a firm future in modern life. Rudimentary current AI also has a niche apication.
Anyone that thinks there is a certain long term future for any of this needs to examine the reality of depletion. Cornucopians like you Jon need to realize that complexity and energy intensity are closely related. Diminish either in the equation and they both decay fast.
Jon get a grip man your George Jetson world is winding to a close. Learn how to do something of primary value like grow food and other basic skills for survival in a collapsed world. How about that for some head examining.
Corns have the weight of a immense investment in a world that is so fragile and unsustainable. They have been habituated and condition to process of technology and development all their lives. They are unable to comprehend anything different not because the material is difficult but because they are terrified of reality of a finite world and an unsustainable way of life requiring ever expanding growth.
Jon M Montgomerie on Mon, 17th Aug 2015 5:57 am
Wow Davy, it’s worse than I thought.
You make a lot of assumptions about me on very little basis; the George Jetson reference is particularly entertaining since I’m a Brit and hence not at all versed in that crap (USA-centric again), I had to look it up! Also I am certainly not a cornucopian …
“Infinite growth of material consumption in a finite world is an impossibility.”
E. F. Schumacher
Absolutely. Dead obvious to me. But on the other hand I can’t begin to take seriously the dim view of the near future you portray. I am entirely confident that my skills (which BTW go way beyond nuclear robotics) will keep me just fine past retirement and into old age.
Sorry, I can’t help you any more other than to reiterate my previous advice.
Davy on Mon, 17th Aug 2015 6:56 am
Jon, not needing your help or asking for it. Your comment on how negative I am shows you are not entertaining any of the obvious copious negative problems and predicaments occurring today. You are instead optimistic in technology and progress will solve these problems.
You need to open your eyes Jon to reality that both the economy along with the technology and resources we have bet all our chips on is failing us. This decay is slow and subtle but anyone who studies it daily realizes an economic collapse is increasingly likely.
The problem with techno-optimist like you they can’t see the forest for the trees. You look at technology without understanding the investment. We can’t pay for many of these technologies in the scale in time and with the size of the needs.
Stick around Jon and watch your view get ripped apart as the other realist get up and read the comments. We don’t bop in and out like you are this morning. We talk about this daily.
Jon M Montgomerie on Mon, 17th Aug 2015 8:11 am
Davy
I keep “bobbing in and out” because I actually have a job to do.
You seem to be intent on assuming the bleakest possible future for mankind, some kind of apocalypse within my lifetime (hence your suggestions that my skills will be redundant and I’ll starve, etc. etc.). I do not accept this as the most likely future, only as a plausible worst case scenario which we should all work hard to avoid.
You also seem intent on assuming some kind of intellectual superiority over me (because you can “see” what I apparently cannot), despite no indication of your own learning or experience and no analysis of what little you know about me. As far as I am aware you know only what the article says, and what I’ve posted.
Finally, you seem intent on assuming that I have a simplistic, universally rosy view of the future, hence your reference to the Jetsons. This last assumption, I can assure you, is certainly not the case, I can absolutely see the potential for disasters of varying types and scales if we don’t play things right; however, I am not about to sit back and say “Oh well, I’d better not bother with this technology stuff, cos I’m absolutely certain that we’re headed for catastrophe anyway, whatever my colleagues and I do!” That would surely be ludicrously defeatist.
Whatever. You’re clearly intent on clinging to these (erroneous IMHO) assumptions, so I see no further point in the discussion. Do not assume my future silence as agreement, but rather as resignation to your hopelessness.
Davy on Mon, 17th Aug 2015 8:24 am
Jon, how many times have you been to this board? If it is more than just today you will have read my many comments over two years now generally daily. You don’t know me nor you know my positions that very greatly from doomer to optimist.
I suggest you have your morning adrenalin rush and move on. You were the one that started your morning battle. We are here to discuss not battle. Battles come with the territory but end after a few comments. Contribute something enlightening or move on. I don’t have time for your whining.