Auxiliary Plant – Remote Handling

The remote handling system is planned to use a vehicle type system, such as the one adopted in ITER for its shielding blanket. Four large horizontal ports are used to extend and support a rail and bring in/out the maintained components.   The remote handling system rail can extend 180 degrees along the toroidal axis.  The vehicle container and its service containers are intended to be parked away from the torus during plasma operation, and replaced with vessel port plugs.

The functions of the remote handling system of JT-60SA are the repair and exchange of divertor cassettes, repair of first wall for the inboard side and the baffle plates. In-vessel coils and stabilizing baffle plates are assumed as permanent components.

The weight of one divertor cassette is expected to be several hundred kg, while one first wall element is only a few kg. The remote handling system will have two types of headers to handle these two different loads.

Experience has shown that a systematic training of the operators is the key to the effectiveness of a remote handling system, so a mock-up of the JT-60SA vacuum vessel is planned in order to gain the needed experience and to perform tests as required.  Space will also be provided for repair of the components.