Dutch remote handling-centre scores ITER contracts
The international fusion project ITER has granted two contracts to the Dutch Remote Handling Study Centre, a cooperation between Heemskerk Innovative Technology (HIT) and the FOM Institute DIFFER. The study centre focuses on the maintenance of ITER components with remotely controlled robotic arms. In the centre, operators use a full scale copy of an ITER remote handling control room and a state of the art virtual reality environment to test designs and maintenance procedures for ITER.
Maintenance for a fusion reactor
ITER is scheduled to start its experiments in 2020. In the 12 meter high and 30 meter wide reactor, hydrogen isotopes fuse together and form helium at temperatures of hundreds of million degrees. The fusion reaction also produces fast neutrons which collide with the reactor wall and deliver their energy as heat. Neutron impacts can also activate the wall and create short-lived radioactive materials. For this reason, maintenance of reactor components such as first mirrors of diagnostics is done via remotely controlled robotic arms in a hot cell.
Augmented reality
One ITER contract went out to the Dutch company HIT, who will investigate the use of augmented reality techniques to support the difficult task of remote handling. The operator who guides the robotic arms can only see the working area of his robot via 2D images on monitors - often black and white, as those cameras are better able to withstand radiation in the hot cell. "In our virtual environment we've modeled all the details in the hot cell", explains HIT's director Cock Heemskerk. "If we can couple that model to the camera images from the hot cell, we can for instance mix the black and white feed with a colored overlay to guide the eye. We're also thinking of force feedback to nudge the operator to the optimal position of the robotic arm. For this last idea, we're working closely with PhD candidates in the H-Haptics programme of the technical sciences foundation STW."
Preferred supplier for remote handling of diagnostics
Together with three European partners, the Dutch Remote Handling Study Centre was also awarded a so-called framework agreement by ITER, with a maximum size of 7.5 million Euros. The contract specifies that the four partners are the only ones who can bid on orders for remote handling analyses of the ITER diagnostics. The diagnostic port plugs weigh a few tons each and track processes in the plasma via viewing ports in the reactor. Each is designed and constructed by a different consortium of companies and researchers, and ITER wants to guarantee that the designs are suited for remote handling maintenance. The framework contract makes DIFFER and HIT preferred suppliers of such analyses. "You could say that we're providing the certification for these designs", says DIFFER's Marco de Baar, head of the tokamak physics group: "We expect these analyses to be important input to the ITER design reviews".
Dutch participation in ITER
The nuclear fusion project ITER is a worldwide cooperation of research institutes and companies, building the most advanced fusion reactor in the world in southern France. The Dutch ITER-NL consortium aims to secure front-line participation in the design, construction and exploitation of ITER for Dutch science and industry. ITER-NL is a consortium of the knowledge partners TNO, NRG, Eindhoven University of Technology and the Foundation FOM with its institute for fundamental energy research DIFFER.
Contact
Marco de Baar (Group leader Tokamak Physics, FOM Institute DIFFER)
Cock Heemskerk (Director Heemskerk Innovative Technology)