Tay Sparks Duc Nguyen-Manh Pengfei Zheng Jan S. Wróbel Michael Gorley Thomas Connolley Christina Reinhard Yiqiang Wang Biao Cai
Vanadium base alloys represent potentially promising candidate structural materials for use in nuclear fusion reactors due to vanadium’s low activity, high thermal strength, and good swelling resistance. In this work, the mechanical properties of the current frontrunner vanadium base alloy, V-4Cr-4Ti, have been interrogated using in-situ high ene…
Preprint PurchaseErwin Jose Lopez Pulgarin Ozan Tokatli Guy Burroughes Guido Herrmann
Tele-manipulation is indispensable for the nuclear industry, since teleoperated robots cancel the radiation hazard problem for the operator. However, the performance limitations of teleoperated robots for nuclear decommissioning tasks is not clearly answered in the literature. In this paper, we propose a task performance-based methodology to evalua…
Preprint PublishedAlex Valentine Thomas Berry Steven Bradnam James Hagues James Hodson
The accurate and efficient mapping of the radiation environment in a nuclear fusion reactor requires the most advanced radiation transport tools. The Monte Carlo method has long been deployed to deal with the complexity of fusion relevant geometries, with MCNP the adopted industry standard code among the European and wider international community. …
PreprintOzan Tokatli Pragna Das Radhika Nath Luigi Pangione Alessandro Altobelli Guy Burroughes Robert Skilton
The nuclear industry has some of the most extreme environments in the world, with radiation levels and extremely harsh conditions restraining human access to many facilities. One method for enabling minimal human exposure to hazards under these conditions is through the use of gloveboxes which are sealed volumes with controlled access for perfor…
Preprint PublishedD. Butters E.T. Jonasson V. Pawar
Supervising and controlling remote robot systems currently requires many specialised operators to have knowledge of the internal state of the system in addition to the environment. For applications such as remote maintenance of future nuclear fusion reactors, the number of robots (and hence supervisors) required to maintain or decommission a fac…
Preprint PublishedJ. Peng H Zhang Y. Wang M. Richardson X. Liu D. Knowles M. Mostafavi
The small punch test (SPT) has been widely used to evaluate the mechanical properties of materials for the nuclear industry due to its advantage of requiring minimal sample volumes. In this paper, the correlation between SPT and uniaxial tensile testing (UTT) is investigated for three materials used in the plasma-facing components of fusion reactor…
Preprint PublishedD. McGarrigle E. Flynn C. Kennedy A. Loving S. Budden
This paper reports on a study of the existing or proposed maintenance arm systems with similar functions and structure to that of the proposed DEMO Multi-Purpose Deployer (MPD).The current MPD design iteration consists of a boom deployment system that is ~30m long and can support a payload of ~1000kg, while still being able to access the DEMO va…
Preprint PublishedL. W. Packer P. Batistoni N. Bekris S. C. Bradnam H. Chohan M. Fabbri Z. Ghani M. R. Gilbert R. Kierepko E. Laszynska D. Leichtle I. Lengarf S. Loreti J. W. Mietelski C. R. Nobs M. Pillon M. I. Savva I. E.Stamatelatos T. Vasilopoulou A. Wojcik-Gargula A. Zoharf JET Contributors
The characteristically intense neutron source generated in deuterium-tritium (DT) fusion power presents notable challenges for materials comprising the structure of the device which are exposed to them. These include radiation damage effects leading to degradation of structural properties with impact on maintenance and replacement frequency, but…
PreprintHarun Tugal Salvador Pacheco-Gutierrez Myles Verdon Ipek Caliskanelli Alfie Sargent Alice Cryer Ronan Kelly Alexandros Plianos Andika Yudha Qasim Kapasi Robert Skilton
Robotic systems that enable the operators to remotely manipulate delicate materials with high dexterity and sufficient force feedback will pave the path for improvements of the safe maintenance and decommissioning processes within the nuclear industry. Training the operators, however, for challenging conditions (e.g., low visibility, restricted …
Preprint PurchaseS. Pacheco-Gutierrez I. Caliskanelli R. Skilton
Nuclear power, conceived during the second world war as a mass destruction technology, has now become the primer technology aiming at low-carbon emission source of energy. Furthermore, the joining of the once divided West and East has led to a worldwide research ground that involves not only physics or chemistry but many other engineering fields…
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