Case Study : Dose mapping to protect workers using mobile robotics
An active nuclear plant in Switzerland with boiling water reactors decided to take an innovative and highly accurate approach to protecting workers . The customer wanted to measure and characterise radiation in various parts of the plant using robotics , to protect workers in a highly complex environment .
Createc ’ s gamma sensor , the N-Visage Scanner , was used in conjunction with a Boston Dynamics
®
Spot robot with a payload of sensors , including the Leica BLK Arc laser scanner . These sensors allowed the creation of a breadcrumb trail of dose
® measurements from Spot , as well as a 3D point cloud showing the spatial location of radiation sources . present in the environment . This led to the creation of dose planes to be used on site for radiation protection , enabling effective decisions and solutions to be implemented from a health physics perspective by the plant operators . The remote nature of the deployment also allowed better characterisation of rooms that were high risk to workers , so were rarely entered . The insight provided ultimately led to a reduction in worker dose uptake and better engineering decision making for operations in unknown environments .
3D model showing dose plane
Data from the sensors was then analysed in N- Visage Fusion , Createc ' s software for advanced dose and source-term modelling , to allow 3D visualisation of the radiation sources and dose
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