ITER Hot Cell optimisation

The Hot Cell has the pivotal role in supporting on-going maintenance of the ITER machine. The experimental nature of the ITER Tokamak dictates that Hot Cell tasks will be complex in nature and will evolve over the lifetime of the project. This paper presents the results of a study commissioned by the ITER Organisation and undertaken by Oxford Technologies Ltd and Comex Nucleaire to investigate optimisation of the Hot Cell baseline design to ensure it is able to fulfil these challenging requirements. The study reviews the rationale for the current baseline Hot Cell design, derives a set of design variables which have a significant influence on the Hot Cell (e.g. Divertor refurbishment strategy) and assesses the impact of these variables. The method adopted was to perform a quantitative analysis of the impact of each variable individually without consideration of any other factors. Following on from this a multi-dimensional analysis, performed by expert assessment, was undertaken to assess the relative benefits and limitations of all of these interacting variables. The output of this study are alternative Hot Cell layouts which are optimised for criteria considered critical to the ITER Organisation, i.e. maximising Tokamak availability and minimising Hot Cell cost and size. This paper discusses the overall study process, issues raised and results.