British nuclear engineering consulting company Ansaldo Nuclear has unveiled its Machine Retrieval System, a remotely controlled robotic device that will retrieve, verify, seal and pack 860 metric tons of radioactive ion exchange resins and various sludges at the Caorso Nuclear Power Plant in Italy.
The waste will be retrieved from two temporary storage areas at the plant that provide access challenges. The robot in question, called the Machine Retrieval System, had redundant operating systems to allow for operations to continue should one system fail.
The contracted challenge, a joint venture with JAVYS, is to move, seal, process, pack and ship 5,600 drums of radioactive waste to a waste storage plant in Jaslovske Bohunice in Slovakia, where the waste will be stabilized for final storage. The contract for the decommissioning was awarded to the partners in 2015 by Societa Gestione Impianti Nucleari SpA.