An interactive design approach for nuclear fusion purposes: Remote handling system for FAST divertor

The paper deals with the design issues concerning the remote maintenance of divertors in fusion advanced studies torus (FAST), a satellite tokamak acting as a test bed for the study and the develop of innovative technologies oriented to ITER and DEMO programs, pilot examples of the feasibility of energy production from nuclear fusion on the Earth. FAST remote handling (RH) solutions are provided according to an "interactive design review" philosophy based on virtual prototyping techniques. Assuming an ITER configuration as start point, it foresees an iterative process of design review, carried out in virtual reality (VR) environment and oriented to obtain a sort of best solution from the RH point of view. Any iteration includes the analysis of the current solution and the proposal of new and alternative ones, based on the requirements fulfillment and the improvement of critical points highlighted. In such a way, and this is the main novelty introduced by the paper, the interactive design review in a VR collaborative environment becomes the tool able to put in cooperation and in positive competition various and different competences, required by a multidisciplinary problem as the realization of nuclear fusion machine, in order to reach a shared solution. A first preliminary FAST RH solution is hereinafter presented, accompanied by the design of a compatible support system, due to the strict relationship between the divertor maintenance and the support configuration. The work was carried out via the collaboration of the "Divertor Test Platform 2" (DTP2) team, in charge of ITER divertor RH tests and located in VTT's Labs of Tampere (Finland), and the IDEAinVR team of CREATE Consortium, with competence in interactive design and VR simulations and located in the Virtual Reality Lab of University of Naples Federico II (Italy)