DEMO — Initiation of remote maintenance requirements

A preliminary assessment on remote maintenance for DEMO (DEMOnstration Power Plant) has been launched in 2011, mainly to revisit the rationale and technology development assumptions that have led to the selection of some design choices in the past. A more detailed assessment of the proposed schemes was required. The development of remote maintenance concepts for DEMO and future fusion power plants is driven by a couple of key requirements to maximize the overall plant availability. That includes heading for feasibility and high reliability of the plant maintenance system. This work is particularly important within the PPPT work programme as novel maintenance concepts must be developed and validated for use in DEMO. Thus one of the objectives for the European Fusion Development Agreement in Power Plant Physics and Technology (EFDA PPPT) 2012 work programme was to establish an initial set of system requirements that the DEMO fusion power plant will place on its Remote Maintenance System (RMS). Based on a preliminary DEMO model, developers of Remote Handling Equipment (RHE) should be provided with a set of comprehensive available information about the working area of RHE for in-vessel and ex-vessel maintenance. The task was not dedicated to repeat a row of top level requirements but to give technical information about different items. Work progress and results are shown in this paper. Being in a pre-conceptual phase, one of the results was that at present there are only few “real” requirements but lots of assumptions. All information was collected, further investigated and brought out as a valuable set of primary boundary conditions for the RHE developers.