Design and Analysis of an Automated Video Inspection Robot for Tube Bundle Corridor in the Center of the First Support Plate of a Nuclear Power Steam Generator

In recent years, there have been frequent incidents of foreign objects inside nuclear power equipment systems, especially those of pressure vessels, steam generators, fuel assemblies and other major main equipment or key components of nuclear power plants, which pose a serious threat to the safe operation of nuclear power plants. In this paper, in response to the need for foreign object inspection of nuclear power steam generators, a set of automatic video inspection robots for the center corridor of the first support plate is developed to automatically video inspect the upper surface area of the first support plate, which has never been video inspected before, with full consideration of the restricted structure of the interior of the steam generator and the irradiation dose environment. This paper firstly analyzes the design indices and design challenges of the automatic video inspection robot for the structural characteristics of the steam generator, and then gives a detailed introduction to the design of the automatic video inspection robot from the aspects of robot structure and control system.