Brakes are off as reactor clean-up moves forward
The handbrake from a vintage 1968 Ford Cortina has been used in a piece of kit to help decommission a reactor at Dounreay.
Chris Irwin, Senior Design Engineer, came up with the innovative concept
Engineers also used the wheels from a kitchen can opener, attached to the handbrake, to help steer a camera inside the Prototype Fast Reactor (PFR) for a survey inside the plant.
Conditions inside the reactor make it impossible for workers to access, meaning photographs taken by the piece of kit help in understanding how best to go about dismantling the redundant facility.
Chris Irwin, Senior Design Engineer, came up with the innovative concept. He said:
I was opening a can of beans at home and realised that the cutting wheel of a can opener was exactly what was needed to make the required diamond-shaped wheel.
I bought four of them and took the wheels off. The camera needed to be guided over obstacles within the reactor, so we realised the incremental nature of the clicks on a handbrake would give us the precise control that we needed.
This is the latest in a long line of novel approaches developed by the company’s workforce, with blu-tack and Cillit Bang among the everyday items that have previously been used to help deliver safe and cost-effective clean-up on behalf of the site’s owner, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.
We are delivering one of the most challenging closure programmes in Europe, but this is another example where innovative, simple solutions prove critical in safely delivering complex projects.
PFR is one of three reactors at the former centre of fast reactor research. It was closed down in 1994, 20 years after it began producing power.