Remote maintenance in IFMIF-DONES: current status and future development program

The International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility—DEMO Oriented Neutron Source (IFMIF-DONES) is a facility currently being built in Granada (Spain). It is an accelerator-driven intense neutron source designed for the study and qualification of structural materials under severe irradiation condition of a neutron field with an energy spectrum similar to the one present in a fusion power reactor. IFMIF-DONES consists of complex systems and massive components that need to be assembled and maintained on site. For several of them, it is required to perform maintenance, inspection and monitoring tasks over many years in a hostile environment and in an efficient, safe, and reliable manner. The maintenance of IFMIF-DONES systems and components, located mainly in the Test Systems, Lithium Systems, and Accelerator Systems, is classified as a remote handling (RH) 1st class activity. Over the last 5 years, much progress has been made in the definition of the maintenance activities to be performed for such a facility. The main achievements include: the definition of the RH maintenance requirements; implementation of the maintenance strategy; classification of components from the maintenance point of view; the development of the maintenance procedures and the design of the RH system (RHS). This latter system comprises the whole set of RH equipment and tooling for the execution of the maintenance tasks. In addition, a wide experimental program is ongoing to validate the RH maintenance operations and the custom and special purpose devices used to implement them. In this paper, an overview of the present status of the IFMIF-DONES RHS design is given together with a description of the validation activities, either underway or planned in the next coming years, for the RH maintenance of various systems and components of the facility.