Design of Improvised Manual Control Unit for NIRR-1 Pneumatic Transfer System Rabbit Type-A

Rabbit type-A pneumatic transfer system of Nigeria Research Reactor 1 (NIRR-1) essentially serves as one of the samples transfer media into and out of the reactor irradiation sites. The system developed some major operational faults in both console and computer controls. Due to the failure of the systems, epithermal irradiation sites had to be accessed directly using strings, which posed the potential danger of radiation exposure to personnel. To alleviate this prevailing situation, an improvised manual control unit was designed and fabricated using locally sourced components. The unit successfully transfers capsulated samples IN and OUT of the reactor with maximum delay of about 1 second. The unit thus improves safety in the utilization of NIRR-1 and can also serves as a redundant control system upon the successful rehabilitation of the main control console and or computer control systems. (author)