Radioactive Component and Fuel Handling Using Remote/Robotic Equipment at Ontario Hydro's Pickering Nuclear Generating Station

Abstract

Pickering NGS is comprised of eight 540 megawatt nuclear generating units. Each unit has on-power remote fuelling capability, which collectively handles about 25,000 fuel bundles per year. To accomplish daily on- power fuelling in extreme radiation fields, remote/robotic type equipment and systems have been designed and developed by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd to a reliable and sophisticated state. Capabilities of the equipment have been greatly extended beyond the original design of fuelling requirements to include reactor fuel channel abnormal recovery operations and fuel channel inspection. Reactor structure inspection and maintenance needs have lead to numerous cases of specially designed remote tooling and adaptation of some commercial robotic devices.