Radiation, risk and robots: Ripping out a reactor's heart
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nuclearpower-plant-dismantling-insigh-idUSKBN1930H6 Jun 12, 2017
As head of the Muelheim-Kaerlich nuclear reactor, Thomas Volmar spends his days plotting how to tear down his workplace. The best way to do that, he says, is to cut out humans.
About 200 nuclear reactors around the world will be shut down over the next quarter century, mostly in Europe, according to the International Energy Agency. That means a lot of work for the half a dozen companies that specialize in the massively complex and dangerous job of dismantling plants.
Those firms – including Areva (AREVA.PA), Rosatom's Nukem Technologies Engineering Services, and Toshiba's (6502.T) Westinghouse – are increasingly turning away from humans to do this work and instead deploying robots and other new technologies.
That is transforming an industry that until now has mainly relied on electric saws, with the most rapid advances being made in the highly technical area of dismantling a reactor's core – the super-radioactive heart of the plant where the nuclear reactions take place.
The transformation of the sector is an engineering one, but companies are also looking to the new technology to cut time and costs in a competitive sector with slim margins.
Dismantling a nuclear power plant can take decades and cost up to 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion), depending on its size and age. The cost of taking apart the plant in Muelheim-Kaerlich will be about 800 million euros, according to sources familiar with the station's economics.
Some inroads have already been made: a programmable robot arm developed by Areva has reduced the time it takes to dismantle some of the most contaminated components of a plant by 20-30 percent compared with conventional cutting techniques.
For Areva and rival Westinghouse, reactor dismantling is unlikely to make an impact on the dire financial straits they are mired in at present as it represents just a small part of their businesses, which are dominated by plant-building....
