Underwater Remote Handling Equipment for Reactor Internals Maintenance

More than fifty nuclear reactors generate about thirty-five percent of electricity in Japan. The need to operate these reactors safely and in a stable manner constitutes a very important issue. On the other hand, aged reactors are increasing and they are not necessarily designed and constructed using the latest technology. Stress Corrosion Cracking (SCC) on reactor internal components has become a major concern regarding aged reactors in recent years. Usually maintenance work such as inspection, repair, and preventive maintenance for core components is done by using underwater remote handling and robotic technology. It becomes very important to develop not only new efficient technology for inspection, repair, and preventive maintenance for all suspect components and but also the associated application technology for execution in a reactor. We have been developing several kind of remote handling equipment for underwater maintenance work. This paper describes some results obtained in the area of underwater remote handling that can contribute to the progress of plant reliability. (authors)