5-9 September 2016
Prague Congress Centre
Europe/Prague timezone

O3C.3 Remote handling of DEMO breeder blanket segments: Blanket transporter conceptual studies

6 Sep 2016, 17:20
20m
Meeting Hall V 2nd floor (Prague Congress Centre)

Meeting Hall V 2nd floor

Prague Congress Centre

5. května 65, Prague, Czech Republic
Board: 3
Oral G. Vessel/In-Vessel Engineering and Remote Handling O3C

Speaker

Jonathan Keep (RACE)

Description

As part of the programme to create a viable concept design for the Eurofusion DEMO powerplant, RACE is developing a concept design for the remote maintenance system. Within the DEMO tokamak, breeding blankets will require periodic replacement. In the current DEMO design this replacement will utilize the upper vertical ports at the top of the vacuum vessel. This operation will be challenging due to the scale of the blankets (~10m tall, up to 80 tonnes). The DEMO RM project to date has developed concepts for the blanket replacement process. Using a systems engineering based approach to understand the requirements for the blanket replacement activity, a key system, carrying a high level of technical risk, has been identified: the blanket transporter. The blanket transporter will be required to manoeuvre the blanket segments between the mounts and fixations within the vacuum vessel, and a position that will allow them to be lifted vertically through the upper port. This paper outlines a conceptual study to develop a feasible design for the blanket transporter. Requirements were obtained via functional analysis and CAD based kinematic analysis of the breeder blanket replacement. These requirements were used to develop a number of concepts for the main kinematic mechanism. Evaluation these lead to down selection of two concepts for further development. The proposed concepts demonstrate the potential for developing and integrating a number of technologies within the blanket transporter to produce a feasible engineering design that could be used to validate the blanket replacement strategy and hence viability of the DEMO concept. This work has been carried out within the framework of the EUROfusion Consortium and has received funding from the Euratom research and training programme 2014-2018 under grant agreement No 633053. The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the European Commission.

Co-authors

Antony Loving (RACE, UKAEA, Culham Science Centre, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom) Jonathan Keep (RACE, UKAEA, Culham Science Centre, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom) Matti Coleman (Eurofusion Consortium, Boltzmannstr.2, Garching 85748, Germany) Neelam Gupta (RACE, UKAEA, Culham Science Centre, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom) Steve Wood (RACE, UKAEA, Culham Science Centre, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom)

Presentation Materials

There are no materials yet.