Laser scanner for nuclear-inspection safety

The Faro Laser Scanner LS manufactured by Faro Technologies has created "Virtual Walkdowns" with 3D imaging to improve nuclear-inspection safety at Atomic Energy of Canada.

In an industry where safety is the foremost objective, Atomic Energy of Canada (AECL) needed a way to minimise a long-standing concern related to nuclear plant shutdowns: exposing inspection personnel to radiation.

During a typical "walkdown inspection", all reactor dimensions and equipment - each valve, breaker box, motor, pump, doorway, seal or other item of hardware - within the vault must be verified that it has been set up to as-designed specifications and that only approved components have been used.

Previously, that was a time-consuming process.

The Faro LS is designed to capture detailed images of big things.

It has a range of up to 76 meters and can scan in a 360deg x 320deg field of view.

At the rate of 120,000 points per second - up to 100 times faster than most time-of-flight scanners - a typical scan is collected in only 4.5 minutes, but image resolution is perhaps its most astonishing property: a typical data cloud contains 28-million pixels per scan.

Scanning the reactor with the Faro Laser Scanner LS, AECL recreated the interior of the reactor vault as a virtual environment, similar to a 3-D blueprint - everything in proportion, but much more detailed and can be walked-through virtually.

"One team will want to make sure that they can evaluate an access door, to be sure that it is wide enough to move transfer flasks in and out; another will want to see the serial numbers on pumps," noted Mark Carney of the AECL Simulation Department.

"Although the finished image is digital, it gives the same impression as a high-res photo".

That realistic 3-D image was then used as a tool to perform the required shutdown inspections, and reduced the radiation exposure.

Before the company adopted the virtual approach, walkdowns involved a dozen or more people combing through a reactor, tape measure, note pad, and digital camera in hand.

Typically, thousands of person hours were involved collecting data.

Today, in-reactor time usually totals less than 100 hours per walkdown.

The auditing portion of the project has been streamlined, too.

Since the virtual environment is so much more accessible than the actual reactor, engineers can quickly verify that the components and dimensions are those called for in the specifications.

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