Customer:         Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL)
Project:             Bruce Units 1 & 2 Retube
Location:          Bruce Power's Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, Ontario, Canada
Services:          Engineering, design, procurement, fabrication, assembly, testing

As part of life extension refurbishment of CANDU reactors, highly irradiated fuel channel components must be removed and replaced.  For this "Re-tubing" process, hundreds of irradiated and non-irradiated reactor components, tools and equipment must be transported and manipulated between the reactor face and other equipment on the reactor vault floor. This RTC system is a multi-axis, gantry style, tele-robotic system, designed to transport and manipulate tools and equipment at the reactor face and access all fuel channel sites. It works along with two multi-axis work platforms to remove all of the highly irradiated channel components from the reactor, and transport them to shielding casks on the vault floor.

Control of the system is accomplished locally through a pendant control, or remotely from a console located in a Control Centre outside of the containment vault and includes many operating and safety features such as software and hardware interlocks. Primary and backup modes of operation are employed with duplicate redundant drives on each axis.  The equipment has a lift capacity of 3000 lbs. with a positional accuracy up to +/- 0.063".