Environmental hardening of equipment operating in an automated test bed enclosure. Special Isotope Separation Program (SIS)

摘要

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Plutonium Systems Engineering plans to demonstrate a materials handling system in an automated test bed located in the cold test facility, in FY91. The equipment operating in the automated glove box test bed consists of a modified, bridge mounted robot that is electrically driven, robot tooling, a tilt-pour furnace, mechanisms for loading and unloading the furnace, mechanisms for loading and unloading the crucible, and mechanisms for button breakout and can opening. Each of the pieces of equipment mentioned have components such as motors (with or without brushes), bearings, resolvers, encoders, sliding surfaces, cabling, and electrical connectors that must function in the harsh environment of the test bed enclosure, and each of the components described must be hardened to the enclosure environment. The automated test bed is to provide a representation of a weapons-grade plutonium enclosure. Although the decision to operate the enclosure in a nitrogen or argon atmosphere has not been made, this report considers the dry argon atmosphere as the more difficult case. Other environmental requirements on the equipment operating in the test bed enclosure are: Low moisture and low oxygen atmosphere, and some abrasive dust resulting from the process. A surrogate material will provide flow and dusting characteristics of weapons-grade plutonium oxide. Weapons-grade plutonium will not be introduced into the test bed enclosure. However, for future reference, radiation effects on materials are addressed.