Applications

Nuclear

Confined spaces in a nuclear environment present many more challenges than in most other industries. The following case study describes how OC Robotics snake-arm robots conducted a critical repair at Ringhals nuclear power station in Sweden.

Watch a video of the story.

Snaking around in a nuclear jungle

OC Robotics completed its first commercial nuclear contract in the summer of 2004. Two types of robot (five in total) were supplied to Ringhals AB to complete an urgent pipe replacement in an extremely awkward area below one of their reactors. 

Before the operation could be performed on the real environment, there was extensive training on a custom-built mock-up.  After thoroughly practising the whole procedure, the team, led by Uddcomb Engineering AB, conducted a trial installation and operation within reactor containment as part of the acceptance tests.  Replacing the leaking section of pipe involved more than 30 distinct procedures with the majority being conducted by the robots working cooperatively.

The more flexible snake-arm was used to get the ideal camera location to monitor the process whilst the other snake-arm was used to deliver the processing tools and fixtures, remove the old pipe, introduce the new pipe and conduct tasks such as welding and inspection.

In August 2004 a single pipe repair was successfully completed and, a month later the generic solution based on the robots, that is able to repair any of the other 156 similar pipes, successfully completed the Factory Acceptance Tests.

Download the full case study (pdf)

Please contact us to find out more about our work in the nuclear industry.