Rail deploying equipment of ITER blanket remote handling system

Matsumoto, Yasuhiro; Kakudate, Satoshi; Takeda, Nobukazu; Taguchi, Ko; Kozaka, Hiroshi; Koizumi, Koichi; Shibanuma, Kiyoshi

The ITER Blanket (BL) has to be maintained by remote handling means due to high radiation level in the VV after D-D operation. The ITER blanket system is maintained by a BL remote handling (RH) system consist of vehicles with manipulator traveled through an articulated rail deployed inside the VV. Towards the construction, the BL RH system design has been improved and developed in more detail. On the BL RH system, the articulated rail has to be assembled inside transfer casks to deploy the rail inside the VV. In particular, the technical issues of the rail connection in the cask are (1) tight tolerance of a pin at a hinge and (2) limited space for the rail connection inside a cask. To solve the issues, a rail connection mechanism which has compliance mechanisms and positioning mechanisms to realize the rail connection in good accuracy has been developed. This paper summarizes a result of the design work and status of R&D on the rail connection mechanism for the ITER BM RH system.