Design progress of the ITER blanket remote handling equipment

Nakahira, Masataka; Matsumoto, Yasuhiro; Kakudate, Satoshi; Takeda, Nobukazu; Shibanuma, Kiyoshi; Tesini, A.*

Invessel components of ITER have to be maintained by remote handling (RH) equipment due to high radiation level in the vacuum vessel (VV) after D-D operation. Blanket module (BM) is maintained by a manipulator mounted on a vehicle traveled through an articulated rail deployed inside the VV. Towards the construction, the BLRH equipment design has been improved and developed in more detail. The overview of design results are introduced in this paper. The design of rail deployment system of the BLRH has been updated to enable the rail connection in the transfer cask in order to minimize occupation space. For this purpose, design works have been performed for concept, sequence and typical simulation of BL replacement in the VV and rail deployment of the RH equipment in the cask, including cask docking. The technical issues of the rail connection in the cask are (1) tight tolerance of a pin at a hinge, (2) limited space of the connection inside a cask and (3) tight positioning accuracy. This paper summarizes the idea to solve these issues and a result of the design work. The paper also introduces a new cable handling equipment, rail support equipment and BL receiver/transporter.