Russia’s production association Mayak (part of Rosatom) says that, in 2024, it will put into operation two new robotic systems – Mustang and Tornado. The Tornado reconnaissance robot was developed at the NE Bauman Moscow State Technical University. It is able to overcome any obstacles and can even negotiate flooded premises. This small all-terrain vehicle can carry out radiation reconnaissance and engineering work with ionising radiation sources. It can move quickly inside buildings and along flights of stairs. It is equipped with a camera, a gamma visor, a 3D scanner, and is controlled via a radio channel at a distance of up to one kilometre. It can operate in strong radiation fields, where the level of absorbed dose of ionizing radiation is very high.
Mustang is an explorer research robot created using Caliber software by researchers in Miass in the Chelyabinsk region. Its task is to take samples of building structures, to clear the way for Tornado. It can determine the characteristics of the environment and the temperature of objects, and the concentration of gases in the atmosphere. It can measure the absorbed dose rate, take solid, liquid and aerosol samples, open hatches and doors, cut, lift and move various objects.
“As part of the federal target programme, Rosatom set us the task of inspecting radiation-hazardous buildings and structures,” said Evgeny Derbenev, head of the industrial safety service department at Mayak Production Association. “There is no design documentation for the old Soviet nuclear legacy facilities. And the admission to such objects due to the high level of radiation cannot exceed three minutes. So we decided to approach Rosatom with a proposal to create a pilot project for the use of robotic systems to inspect buildings and structures. We started looking for enterprises that manufacture basic platforms for robotic systems that can operate in high radiation fields and are equipped with additional attachments.”
From 2024, Mustang and Tornado will start working at Mayak’s facilities. The industrial safety service of the enterprise understands the need to create unique mobile robots for examining decommissioned industrial uranium-graphite reactors and burial grounds, and to replicate such models for wider use in industry.
Mayak was originally established in the late 1940s to produce plutonium for the Soviet nuclear industry. The main directions of the current activities include: fulfilment of the state defence order for the production of components of nuclear weapons; transportation and processing of used fuel; production and sale of isotope products; mechanical engineering and instrument making; research and production activities; and the solution of nuclear legacy problems.
Like weapons production sites worldwide, there was little attention to safety in the early years and unregulated disposal of high-level waste (HLW) left large areas highly contaminated. This was exacerbated in 1957 by the explosion of a waste tank. Mayak has since faced a huge remediation task, with which it is making positive headway. In 2015, after years of work and huge expense it completed the mothballing and remediation of Lake Karachai on the site where liquid HLW had been dumped and which had been described by the Washington, DC-based Worldwatch Institute as the most polluted spot on Earth.
Currently the decommissioning of legacy production facilities is underway. Vasily Tinin, director for state policy in the field of radioactive waste management, recently told the forum-dialogue "National interest, ecology, safety" in Chelyabinsk that facilities no longer needed will be decommissioned, and the territory will be rehabilitated. In total, by 2035, it is planned to decommission 26 Mayak facilities. Mayak Director General Andrey Poroshin told the forum: “This is a solution to the problems that arose during the implementation of the first nuclear project, when they still didn’t really know what radiation was, what the consequences of enrichment were.”
Image courtesy of Rosatom
