Operational Description for the ITER Hot Cell Sampling Station Machine Using TruPro® Technology

Acceleration of the pace of sampling and characterization at the IO site will require a program of effective and focused action; one that is paramount to a safe and economically viable facility operation and decommissioning program strategy.  IO needs to establish preliminary radionuclide quantitative data of the content and radioactivity of components and materials of the reactor block and activated and tritium contaminated components.  NMNTI has developed insitu portable tools TruPro®for the assessment and radiochemical analysis of redundant nuclear buildings and the disposal of nuclear process wastes to meet Waste Acceptance Criteria (WAC).

NMNTI can access the activated waste level volumes of the ITER internal metal components by implementing the Hot cell sampling and profiling tool in conjunction with an in cell robot.

The in cell robot is specifically selected as it meets several operational criteria that other options are lacking. These are: -

  • It can span the large activated components to 4.60 m,
  • It can lock off the robotic arm and not move more than 0.07mm,
  • It can handle a mass of 900 Kg to access sampling locations and
  • Retrieve incremental metal samples at depth through the activated components easily measured and sampled surface.
  • It is radiation hardened to operate in high rad environments .

Profiling the internal metal components of the fusion reactor to depth will include the following desired capabilities and design features of the equipment:

  • powered by a local electric supply and backup generator coupled to 10-meter power cables through the RedZone Hot cell concrete wall,
  • removal of 10 discrete (10 samples and 1 separate for field blank tritium background) 1 mm metal samples per sample location or as desired by IO,
  • remove incremental depths of potentially contaminated metal from predetermined sampling points sequentially to depth, even if the sampling points sequentially sampled to depth are across void spaces,
  • collection of all metal particulate and fugitive tritium from sampling operations into specialized filter units, and
  • produce representative samples in a powdered or chip form delivered by the robot through the 3-port transfer tunnel to the laboratory for radioanalyses.

By physically acquiring the material samples from the Activated Waste proposed sampling locations the envisioned risks of sampling are demonstrated to be surmountable and in most material interfaces probably easily with robust rugged drill bits retrieving samples hermetically. Each sampling material and depth has a unique set of radiological engineering concerns and sampling logistics and with the envisioned Hot cell TruProBit® sampling head to collect and retrieve and produce a set of representative samples with radiochemical profile of the activated tritium contaminated waste component.


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