Conceptual Design Studies of Special-Purpose Equipment for Fusion Engineering Device Torus-Sector Remote Maintenance

摘要

One of the major maintenance operations anticipated for fusion reactors of the Tokamak configuration is remote removal and replacement of torus sectors. This operation will be difficult due to the massive nature of the sector (375 tonnes), and also due to the precision with which it must be positioned within the fixed structure. The same problem, only to a lesser degree, applies to sub-components of the sector such as the limiter blades, shielding, test assemblies, etc. General and specific design requirements have been generated and trade studies conducted on reactor interfacing details as well as handling machine concepts. On the basis of the design requirements and trade studies, a perferred concept for the sector handling machine was developed. In addition, a similar machine was developed for handling the intermediate sized sector sub-components. While most operations will be performed by special purpose machines such as described above, there is a need for a versatile, relatively high capacity mobile system. A concept suitable for this mobile application was also developed as part of these studies. The general conclusion, to the extent these studies have been completed, was that special single-purpose machines will be required to perform the operations requiring high load capacity and handling precision. The machine concepts developed were felt to be within the state-of-the-art, and will make extensive use of commercially available components. The most serious problem was felt to be development of simple methods to obtain the required precision in positioning massive objects such as the torus sector. (ERA citation 07:052367)