Application of unmanned aerial vehicles for radiological inspection

Remote Handling Systems (RHS) are specially designed for regular operations inside and outside of the nuclear reactors for inspection and maintenance. The reactor is shutdown during the installation and operation of the RHS, which is time-consuming and expensive. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are a possible solution to perform inspection missions inside the reactor before the RHS operations. This work presents possible applications of UAVs to perform inspection missions inside the reactor during its shutdown. Such UAVs are able to transport different on-board sensors to get an insight view of the blankets and other elements inside the reactor, while providing the maneuverability and endurance to perform the inspection missions. The same approach can also be used for inspection of contaminated areas, such as the fission reactors for leakage detection, storage areas of nuclear sources, or even in hazardous scenarios of nuclear disasters. The costs of producing, maintaining and operating UAVs are expected to be low when compared to the time and costs that can be saved with the valuable information acquired during the flight. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.