| Client | Bechtel National |
| Facility | DOE Hanford Waste Treatment Plant |
| Location | Hanford Site, WA |
Rendering of Swab and Monitor System
Located at the DOE Hanford Site in Richland, Washington is the River Protection Project. Within this project is an underground tank storage area with waste consisting of approximately 190 million curies in 55.5 million gallons of highly radioactive and mixed hazardous waste. The River Protection Project is building a Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) to handle this highly radioactive tank waste. The WTP will treat, immobilize (vitrify), and package the tank waste. The WTP complex consists of: Pretreatment facility, Low Activity Waste facility, and High Level Waste (HLW) facility. The HLW facility will house two glass melters to vitrify the high level radioactive waste. The molten glass will be poured into a stainless steel canister.
S.A.Robotics is designing, fabricating, and testing a Swab and Monitor system for the exterior of the canister. Additionally, S.A.Robotics is designing, fabricating, and testing equipment for the Pretreatment and Low Activity Waste facilities.
Specific design requirements include:
- Detailed design for a 40 year life span
- Operating in 1E+4 R/hr environment
- Engineering calculations including Seismic Analysis and Finite Element Analysis
- Preparation of multiple sets of drawings
- Procurement of nuclear grade components, assembly, test facility, Factor Acceptance Testing, installation fixtures, performance documentation, and field support.
The Swab and Monitoring Robotic Manipulator is a fully automatic, 8 axis robotic arm with capability for remote manual control. It is used to remove smearable radionuclide contamination from a filled and sealed high level waste canister surface, perform surface swabbing, and disposal of contaminated materials from the HLW facility. With the integrated canister turntable, the arm is capable of reaching any point on the surface of the canister while maintaining a controlled contact force during the swabbing operations. While swabbing the surface of the canister, the controller stores contact position data that are analyzed to produce an accurate measurement of the straightness and ovality of the canister and provides the resulting cylindricity geometry in digital form to the customer’s Integrated Control Network (ICN). The control system will manage axis motion, data input/output, and communication with the customer ICN. Inverse kinematic calculations provide accurate, coordinated motion for the axes to produce easily controlled global frame of reference position and orientation for the end effector. Thirty-four separate specialized components are included in this contract.
S.A.Robotics’ engineering staff uses Pro Engineer® to prepare multiple design packages along with Mechcanica, SAP, and other software required for design analysis. S.A. Robotics’ engineers are required to demonstrate strict compliance to all codes and standards including AWS, DOE Orders, IEEE standards, NEC, ANSI, ASME, NEMA, UBC, and OSHA. All aspects of the project are conducted in accordance with DOE Order 414.1A Quality Assurance Program requirements. Bechtel representatives are present for witness and hold points throughout fabrication, assembly, and testing. Testing will involve the fabrication of mock test equipment and full functional interface testing. This contract is a firm fixed price contract.