ABB Robots and Nuclear Cleanup: Fukushima to Home

From 1964 hot-cell tongs to TEPCO's 22-metre Fukushima arm, how remote robots clean up nuclear sites and where ABB IRB 6700 and RobotStudio fit in.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

9/25/20261 min read

In December 1964, Prince Bernhard toured the reactor centre at Petten in the Netherlands and was shown a master-slave manipulator, a long steel arm set through a shielded wall. An operator moved one end by hand and tongs copied the motion inside the hot cell. For decades, nuclear material was handled that way.

Black and white photo of men in lab coats beside a long manipulator arm set through a wall

Prince Bernhard is shown a remote manipulator at the Petten reactor centre, Netherlands, December 1964. Photo: Jack de Nijs / Anefo via Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Those tongs are still in use. Idaho National Laboratory runs remote manipulators behind thick leaded glass, and at Sellafield in England, Boston Dynamics Spot robots now take contamination swabs in rooms people would rather not enter. The work is slow, because a person outside still drives every motion.

Metal manipulator tongs holding a small part behind yellow-tinted shielding glass

Remote manipulators at work inside a hot cell at Idaho National Laboratory. Photo: Idaho National Laboratory / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Fukushima Daiichi is the hardest case. Around 880 tonnes of melted fuel debris remain in three damaged reactors. In September, Nikkei Asia reported that TEPCO is preparing a 22-metre, 4.6-tonne arm, five years late, to reach into Unit 2 and bring out a third debris sample this autumn.

Person in white protective suit and helmet looking at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant

An IAEA expert looks across Fukushima Daiichi during a 2015 decommissioning review. Photo: IAEA Imagebank / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

ABB doesn't make arms for work inside a reactor. Its robots suit the jobs around the core, such as sorting, cutting and packing waste into drums. An IRB 6700 carries 150 to 300 kg, and ABB's Foundry Plus protection seals it against dust and high-pressure washing.

Large white ABB IRB 6700 industrial robot lifting a wide panel in a factory

An ABB IRB 6700 lifting a large load in a production cell. Photo: ABB

When nobody can walk in to fix a mistake, every move has to be rehearsed first. In ABB RobotStudio, engineers build a digital twin of the cell and run the whole program offline before the real robot moves. Japan's team tested its Fukushima arm on a full-size mock-up for the same reason.

Engineer typing on a laptop next to a white ABB industrial robot arm

Testing a robot program on a laptop with ABB RobotStudio. Photo: ABB

I expect more of the cleanup to run from control rooms, with robots that copy an operator's hand for tricky jobs and pack waste on their own for the rest. Home robots will need the same habit of stopping and handing a job back to a person when they're unsure.

Man wearing a mixed reality headset gesturing beside a white ABB cobot arm

Checking a robot cell in mixed reality before it is built. Photo: ABB

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