MSRAL participates in DOE Science of Safety Robotics Demo at Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant

DOE decided to conduct a robotic demonstrations at Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio, which is the site of our next major decommissioning effort. DOE had the full participation of United Steelworkers members, and the full support of Fluor-BWXT|Portsmouth, our decommissioning contractor. Two of DOE’s premier national labs – Savannah River and Sandia – provide technical leadership and coordination in addition to demonstrating some of their technologies. Two other world-class federal labs provided their technologies – NASA and JHU-APL, which is a university affiliated research center for the Department of Navy. Two non-profit organizations also, SwRI and OSRF demonstrated their technologies, and five universities provided their robotic technologies. Over a 4-day period, from August 22 through 25, they demonstrated 24 individual robotic technologies that were operated by about 30 USW/FBP workers. After the demos, 9 technologies were determined by the USW members to be near-ready for deployment with a few minor tweaks and a follow-up round of field demonstrations.  The Purdue and MSRAL demos start at the 4:50 minute mark in the above video.