Wall-Climbing Robot with Active Sealing for Radiation Safety of Nuclear Power Plants

Abstract

The safe management of radiation sources and wastes is one of the most important elements in operating nuclear power plants (NPPs). Safe management requires periodically measuring radiation during the operation and decommissioning of NPPs, but it is impossible for radiation management systems to cover all areas, and it may be necessary for a person to measure radiation directly where the risk is high or where it is difficult to measure radiation. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a robot that performs autonomous driving and wall climbing. Active sealing and vacuum suction technologies were used for this robot in order to move existing robots to difficult places. In addition, it is possible to perform nondestructive testing as well as radiation measurements in places such as dry cask storage systems.

Keywords:

• Wall-climbing robot
• active sealing
• vacuum suction
• autonomous driving
• PID control

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning and the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy of Korea (number 20191510301060 and number 20171520101780).