CEA
The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) is a key player in research, development and innovation and is specialised in four main areas:
· defense and security,
· low carbon energies (nuclear and renewable energies),
· technological research for industry,
· fundamental research in the physical and life sciences.
The CEA is located in nine centers spread throughout France. This agency works in partnership with many other research bodies, local authorities and universities. Within this context, the CEA is a stakeholder in a series of national alliances set up to coordinate French research in energy (ANCRE), life sciences, health (AVIESAN), digital science and technology (ALLISTENE), environmental sciences (AllEnvi) and human and social sciences (ATHENA).
Drawing on its widely acknowledged expertise, the CEA actively participates in collaborative projects with a large number of academic and industrial partners.
Nuclear installation dismantling
One of the CEA's major challenges in the nuclear field is the dismantling of nuclear installations. Some facilities have been in use for years and are now obsolete. In these facilities, there are hot cells in which the radioactive material is confined. These cells are inaccessible to humans because of radiation levels. Everything done in these cells is done using remote handling machines.
The first step in the dismantling of a nuclear facility is the decontamination of these hot cells. To do so, it is necessary to identify the main sources of radiation to clean them remotely.
Once these sources are cleaned, radiation intensity decreases and operators can enter the cells, wearing special suits, to finish the decontamination process.
RICA
In order to investigate high activity environments like hot cells, the CEA has developed in partnership with Cyberia a robot called RICA, the French acronym for Inspection Robot for Blind Cells. Today, the third version of this robot is in use in the CEA’s dismantling sites.
This robot is composed of a mobile base (represented on the previous figures) and two different modules which can be mounted on:
The inspection module (pictured in figures below), composed of a gamma camera, a gamma spectrometer, and a dosimeter probe.
The intervention module (pictured in figure below), composed of a remote-operated arm.
With time, the CEA has encountered some cases where the RICA couldn’t pursue its course due to the presence of obstacles which the robot was not designed to be taken into account.
In response, the CEA asked the “Mine d’Alès” students to design a fourth version of the robot, built with a new mobile base able to access:
*conventional step(s)
*a 30 cm long pit
*a 30 cm high landing
and now on to the next subject. [ https://mkxprojet.wixsite.com/website/post/introduction-about-our-side-project-push-robots ]
Comments