Robots will extinguish the fires on the Russian nuclear power plants

The operator of the Russian nuclear power plants Rosenergoatom Concern (is a part of Rosatom) is going to equip the NPP with mobile robots for fire fighting. Request for proposals on creation of robotic installation for these purposes Rosenergoatom published^[1] at the end of fall of 2016. The maximum price of the contract is 24.7 million rubles.

It is going to use mobile robots on territories and in the main production premises of the NPP for protection and suppression of the capital technology equipment and load-carrying structures, said in the published project documentation.

Mobile robots will be able to replace people at fire fighting with the NPP

Mobile robotic installation should be able to extinguish the fires by the compact and sprayed water jet and the gas-generated foam. It will be able to light the place of the fire, to transfer the video image to the operator console, to define the seat of fire at the expense of the sensor of detection of a flame and to have a possibility of own cooling at the expense of the irrigation system.

According to the results of execution of works Rosenergoatom expects to receive design documentation and a prototype of the device. The analysis of the fires and their effects on power objects and also the works connected with fire fighting on power objects where complete or partial replacement of participants of fire extinguishing by robotic means is possible should precede creation of the robot.

Besides, the contractor will have to provide to Rosenergoatom the state-of-the-art review of the existing robotic complexes applied to fire fighting and accomplishment of special works.

It is going complete the works on creation and testing of a sample of the robot in December, 2017.

It should be noted that on separate Russian nuclear power plants robotic complexes are already applied to fire fighting. For example, on the Leningrad nuclear power plant.

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