Nuclear Plant Journal, May-June 2016 NuclearPlantJournal.com
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scenarios with regard to possible failure
modes? So, for instance, if it’s a drone
monitoring radiation sources at Sellafield,
and it’s flying around the Sellafield
chimney, it’s doing inventory and wants
to know where the gamma radiation’s
coming from. You need to establish a
“line-of-sight” so that the drone does not
mistakenly impact material or structures
in the chimney. These drones that are
flying, you have to think in terms of their
ability to function in a confined area. Is it
there to do surveillance, maintenance, or
monitoring? Is it to use a tool adaptor to
collect a concrete specimen because you
think there’s a radiation hotspot there?
At Fukushima Daiichi, the application
is to take away the debris so they can
access the spent fuel pool and to remove
fuel rods, which they did. TEPCO
successfully removed fuel at Fukushima
Daiichi Unit 4 in December 2015 using
robotic technology.
5.
Is there a priority for development of
robotic applications for the US nuclear
power industry?
Nicholson:
Well, if there is a
priority, it’s to protect the worker, keep
the dose as low as reasonably achievable.
We think that a lot of things could be
done if you use robotics. Why wait?
If you want to decommission a facility,
you may be able to do it quicker using
robotics, and it might be cheaper because
you’re not exposing the worker to it,
and you plan it. The one thing I’ve
learned from the Japanese, especially, is
you don’t do anything until you know
first. So you think through the whole
strategy. You use robotics to understand
the configuration of the room, what you
need access through, what you’re going
to be doing, what’s the sensor and/or tool
you’re going to use.
West:
The NRC’s interest as a
regulator is more when a utility, for
example, develops an application, is
there a regulatory oversight needed or
approval? So we’re not developing the
applications ourselves or even telling
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a utility, they need to develop a robotic
application, but we want to be prepared to
review and approve one if one is presented
to us. So if there is a certification process
that’s needed, like I mentioned, there are
standards to be developed, we don’t want
to try to understand those standards five
years from now. We want to understand
them now and kind of follow their
development, so when that application
comes in, we would be prepared
technically to deal with it.
Nicholson:
ASTM International,
ASME and IEEE are some of those
standards
development
institutions
appropriate for coming up with those
standards.
Contact: Scott Burnell, U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, Office of Public
Affairs, Mail Stop O-16D3, 11555
Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852;
