UKAEA robotic snake shows laser-welding capabilities in pipework
A new laser-welding ‘robotic snake’ developed by the UK Atomic Energy Authority has shown it can operate inside of fusion energy powerplant pipework.
The £2.7m, seven-year project by UKAEA’s RACE (Remote Applications in Challenging Environments) was delivered as part of EUROfusion’s DEMO programme, the successor to ITER.
Deployed and operated remotely, the DEMO snake can be put to work in 80mm diameter pipes that are packed together with little space for access.
Tristan Tremethick, lead mechanical design engineer, UKAEA, explained that the pipes are cooling pipes for fusion machines which extract the fusion energy to generate electricity.
“They are high pressure, high temperature pipes which are key to the operation of plants such as STEP (Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production) the UK’s first prototype fusion powerplant, or Europe’s DEMO.”
The project involved creating an ultrasonic sensor-system to move the snake up and down the pipe to identify each precise working location. Tremethick explained that the robot senses distance travelled and thickness of the pipes. This information is used in combination to work out where the robot is in the pipe to verify its location.
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