• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2004.08a
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• pp.363-366
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• 2004

KAERI is developing the Advanced Spent Fuel Conditioning Process (ACP) as a pre-disposal treatment process for spent fuel. In this process, the management process must operate in intense radiation fields as well as in a high temperature. Therefore, remote maintenance has played a significant role in this process. Hence suitable remote handling and maintenance technology needs to be developed along with the design of the process concepts. To do this, we developed the digital mockup for the ACP. The digital mockup provides the capability of verifying the remote operability of the process without fabrication of the process equipment. In other words, by applying virtual reality to the remote maintenance operation, a remote operation task can be simulated in the digital mockup. Through utilizing this graphic simulation in this digital mockup, general guidelines can be established for designing equipment intended for remote handling and maintenance. Also, the designer of the equipment that must be remotely maintained should ensure that there is adequate access to the process equipment. The graphic simulator will substantially reduce the cost of the develo363pment of the remote handling and maintenance procedure as well as the process equipment.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.2407-2409
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• 2005

As the cumulative amount of spent fuel increases, the reliable and effective management of the spent fuel has become a world-wide mission. For this mission, KAERI is developing the Advanced Spent Fuel Conditioning Process (ACP) as a pre-disposal treatment process for spent fuel. Conventional approach to the development of the process and the remote operation technology is to fabricate the process equipment on the same scale as the real environment and demonstrate the remote handling operation using simulated fuel called a mock-up test. But this mock-up test is expensive and time consuming, since the design may need to be modified and the equipment fabricated again to account for the problems found during a testing. To deal with this problem, we developed a digital mockup for the ACP. Also, for an effective utilization of the digital mockup, we developed user interface modules such as the data acquisition and display module and the external input device interface module. The result of this implementation shows that a continuous motion of the manipulator using the external device interface can be represented easily and the information display screens responded well to the simulation situation.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2004.08a
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• pp.840-845
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• 2004

The remote operation of the Advanced Spent Fuel Conditioning Process (ACP) is analyzed by using the 3D graphic simulation tools. Since the spent nuclear fuel, which is a high radioactive material, is processed in the ACP, the ACP equipment is operated in intense radiation fields as well as in a high temperature. Thus, the equipment is operated in a remote manner and should be designed with consideration for the remote handling and maintenance. Also suitable remote handling technology needs to be developed along with the design of the process concepts. For this we developed a graphic simulator, which provides the capability of verifying the remote operability of the ACP without the fabrication of the process equipment. In other words, by applying virtual reality to the remote maintenance operation, a remote operation task can be simulated in the graphic simulator, not in the real environment. The graphic simulator will substantially reduce the cost of the development of the remote handling and maintenance procedure as well as the process equipment, while at the same time developing a remote maintenance concept that is more reliable, easier to implement, and easier to understand.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.13 no.10
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• pp.940-948
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• 2007

The Advanced Spent Fuel Conditioning Process(ACP), which is the process of the reduction of uranium oxide by lithium metal in a high temperature molten salt bath for spent fuel, was developed at Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI). Since the ACP equipment is located in an intense radiation field (hot cell) as well as in a high temperature, it must be remotely operated and maintained. The ACP hot cell is very narrow so the workspace of the wall-mounted mechanical Master-Slave Manipulators(MSMs) is restricted. A Bridge Transported Servo Manipulator(BTSM) system has been developed to overcome the limitation of an access that is a drawback of the mechanical MSMs. The BTSM system consists ot a bridge crane with telescoping tubeset, a slave manipulator, a master manipulator, and a control system. We applied a bilateral position-position control scheme with friction compensation as force-reflecting controller. In this paper, the transmission characteristics on the tendon-and-pulley train is numerically formulated and analyzed. Also, we evaluate the performance of the force-reflecting servo manipulator.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.2226-2230
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• 2005

The Advanced Spent Fuel Conditioning Process (ACP), which is a pre-disposal treatment process for spent fuel is being developed at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI). The ACP equipment is operated in an intense radiation field as well as in a high temperature. Thus, the equipment is designed in consideration of the remote handling and maintenance. This paper describes a Bridge Transported Bilateral Force-Reflecting Servo-Manipulator (BTSM) system, which is being developed to overcome the limitation of access that is a drawback of the mechanical Master-Slave Manipulators (MSMs), which are mounted on the ACP hot cell wall for the operation and the maintenance of the ACP equipment. The BTSM system was manufactured and temporally installed at the mockup to test its performance. The manufactured BTSM system will be installed at the ACP hot cell on June 2005 after the accomplishment of the performance test. The BTSM system consists of four components: a transporter with a telescoping tubeset, a slave manipulator, a master manipulator, and a remote control system. This system will highly increase the volume of coverage for the operation and maintenance of the ACP equipment.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.1319-1322
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• 2003

KAERI is developing the Advanced Spent Fuel Conditioning Process (ACP) as a pre-disposal treatment process for spent fuel. Equipment used for such a spent fuel recycling and management process must operate in intense radiation fields as well as in a high temperature. Therefore, remote maintenance has a played a significant role in this process because of combined chemical and radiological contamination. Hence suitable remote handling and maintenance technology needs to be developed along with the design of the process concepts. To do this, we developed the graphic simulator for the ACP. The graphic simulator provides the capability of verifying the remote operability of the process without fabrication of the process equipment. In other words, by applying virtual reality to the remote maintenance operation, a remote operation task can be simulated in the graphic simulator, not in a real environment. The graphic simulator will substantially reduce the cost of the development of the remote handling and maintenance procedure as well as the process equipment, while at the same time producing a process and a remote maintenance concept that is more reliable, easier to implement, and easier to understand.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.141-144
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• 2006

In this study, we developed a decladding device which separates 250 mm length of simulated nuclear spent fuel rod into the pallets and the pieces of the hulls after inserting the rod cut into the module with several pairs of blades. To improve the performance of the equipment, we considered some mechanisms to prevent the rod cut from being exposed or bounced into the hot-cell, to reduce the operation time, and to insert the rods automatically. It is expected that the newly developed system will contribute to prevent radioactive pollution in the hot-cell, reduce the operation time, and to increase the safety of the operators. As a result of the performance test for some mockup fuel rod cuts in the ACP(Advanced Spent Fuel Control Process) facility, it was verified that the decladding device could be applied to the actual fuel rod cut. And it will be able to use for a scale-up facility in the future.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.2514-2518
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• 2003

The KAERI Spent Fuel Remote Technology Development (SFRTD) Department is developing the remote maintenance and repair equipment, which is used in a hot cell in an intense radiation field, as part of a project to develop the Advanced spent fuel Conditioning Process (ACP). Although several mechanical master-slave manipulators (MSMs) is mounted on the hot cell wall, their reach will be limited and cannot access areas for all the ACP equipment maintenance. A Bridge Transported ServoManipulator (BTSM) has been designed to overcome the limitation of access areas that is a drawback of MSMs for the ACP equipment maintenance. The BTSM system consists of four components: a transporter with telescoping tubeset, a slave manipulator, a master manipulator, and a remote control system. The BTSM system has been designed by Solid Edge that is a 3D computer-aided design (CAD) software, except for the remote control system. The master manipulator and the slave manipulator are kinematically similar in design, except for the handle and the tong, respectively. The manipulators have 6 degrees of freedom (DOF) plus the jaws motion. The transporter has traveling, traverse, and hoisting motion to position the slave manipulator.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.257-268
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• 2005

In this paper, a prototype of the Bridge-Transported Servo Manipulator (BTSM) system is introduced, which has been developed to do operation and maintenance jobs remotely in a hot cell. The system consists of a telescopic transporter, a slave arm, a master arm, and a control system. Several tests such as a positional tracking, a weight handling, reliability, and operability have been performed and test results are presented. Based on the test results, an upgraded system which will be used during demonstrations of the advanced spent fuel conditioning process (ACP) has been designed.