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Advanced RoboticsPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tadr20

Development of a robotsystem for nuclear emergencypreparednessTakahisa Mano & Shoichi HamadaPublished online: 02 Apr 2012.

To cite this article: Takahisa Mano & Shoichi Hamada (2002) Development of a robotsystem for nuclear emergency preparedness , Advanced Robotics, 16:6, 477-479, DOI:10.1163/156855302320535764

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156855302320535764

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Advanced Robotics, Vol. 16, No. 6, pp. 477–479 (2002)Ó VSP and Robotics Society of Japan 2002.Also available online - www.vsppub.com

Technical note

Development of a robot system for nuclear emergencypreparedness

TAKAHISA MANO and SHOICHI HAMADAManufacturing Science and Technology Center, 7th Floor, Mori Building No. 9 1-2-2 Atago,Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan, {mano,hamada}@honbu.mstc.or.jp

Keywords: Nuclear; prevent; remote control.

1. INTRODUCTION

A robot system which supports work to prevent the expansion of a disaster andrestore damage was developed as one of projects for re-examining national man-agement of nuclear emergency preparedness on the occasion the critical accidentin the uranium process plant that occurred in 1999. The outline of the project isdescribed below.

The development of the support system for nuclear accident was accomplished inthe end of March 2001 after the 1 year of research. The Manufacturing Science andTechnology Center was engaged in this development and the production of robotsfor the system was undertaken by � ve companies: Hitachi, Toshiba, MitsubishiHeavy Industry, Nisshow-Iwai and Cybernétix.

For this development, several technical committees composed of experts in ro-botics or nuclear facilities were established. The main activities of the committeesconsist of issues related to the supposed accidents, speci� cations for the develop-ment of robots and research on the technology for nuclear emergency preparedness,as well as robot technology in Europe and the USA.

2. THE OUTLINE OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF A SUPPORT SYSTEMFOR A NUCLEAR ACCIDENT

2.1. Supposition of nuclear accidents and the scenario of practicing the system

The International Atomic Energy Agency de� ned an ‘International evaluationmeasure’ with regard to nuclear accidents. The case when the accident affects theoutside areas of a nuclear power plant comes under this supposition. For example,such a case is presupposed that the safety defense devices do not work well for somereason, which causes serious damage to the reactor core of a nuclear power plant.

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478 T. Mano and S. Hamada

In the context of countermeasures for such kind of accident, a ‘support system fora nuclear accident’ is considered to include the following: grasping the situation ofthe site, preventing the expansion of the disaster and restoration of the site.

The preconditions for utilization of the robot system that executes such supportwork are:

(1) This system is to be used inside of the facility for the nuclear reactor (outsideof the reactor containment) excluding outdoors, in consideration of the Tokai-mura Critical Accident.

(2) A power supply from outside of the nuclear power plant or for emergencies isnot available.

(3) Exclusion of life-saving or the rescue of the injured.

2.2. The composition of this support system

This robot system is composed of several variant ‘working robots’ that carry outsupporting work and ‘monitoring robots’ that watch them working. Usually theyare preserved in a facility for custody. When requested, they are carried by a‘transportation container’ to the site. The control devices for each robot kept in the‘control container’ are carried at the same time. A private ‘power supply device’ isprepared. The composition and characteristics are described below.

(1) Light work robot (Hitachi): a form-adjustable crawler type that executesthe relatively light work such as opening/ shutting general light-type doors,collecting smears, opening/ shutting bulbs with less than 25 A diameter andoperating switches on the board in the site.

(2) Middle work robot (Mitsubishi Heavy Industry): a crawler type � t for theground that execute opening/ shutting general-type doors, opening/ shuttingbulbs with less than 50 A diameter, and opening holes on devices and pipes.

(3) Heavy cargo carrier robot (Mitsubishi Heavy Industry): carrying hoses fordecontamination and materials for shielding.

(4) High radiation resistance robot (Nisshow-Iwai and Cybernétix): radiationresistance to 100 Gy/h radiation dose and 104 Gy accumulated dose thatexecute the heavy work of cutting pipes.

(5) Monitoring/ supporting robot (Toshiba): grasping the site situation and support-ing the working robots, which consists of a vehicle type ‘Monitoring robot I’that can immediately get information about wide areas and a crawling type‘Monitoring robot II’ that can get detailed information.

(6) Auxiliary equipment (Hitachi and Toshiba): composed of power supply devicesfor each robot, cable cases, control containers and transportation containers.

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Robot system for nuclear emergency preparedness 479

3. CONCLUSION

A veri� cation test of a robot system for nuclear emergency preparedness wasexecuted in March 2001 to examine its performance. This system had beendeveloped for only 1 year to enable robots to work in a narrow nuclear powerplant, which means that countermeasures are widely expanded in the case that anuclear disaster occurs. However, 1 year was so limited and such a short time thatsome issues were left to be solved. Also, to utilize this robot system well in thefuture, adequate training, maintenance and improvement are indispensable, as wellas establishment of the system for utilizing it.

This report refers to the outcome of the project subsidized by METI, ‘Develop-ment of a Robot System for Nuclear Emergency Preparedness’.

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