An innovative device to transport electron gun automatically in nuclear power plant

The electron gun, as the equipment to generate and control nuclear reactions, has been widely used in nuclear power plants of the traveling wave reactor. To avoid the damage of radiation to maintenance personnel and improve the safety and security of nuclear reaction, it was necessary to realize the automatic transportation of electron gun. However, the working conditions of the automotic devices in a nuclear radiation environment were harsh and complex, which required the high operational reliability. Combining with the features and working environment, an innovative engineering design process based on quality function deployment (QFD) and function-behavior-structure (FBS) model was proposed for designing the transport device in the nuclear industry. With the guidance of this process, firstly, the problems and technical characteristics of the transport device were analyzed by the QFD method to obtain basic functions. Then, the FBS model was used to assist the designer to express knowledge and expand the search space of the schemes of control, structure, and material. Finally, the overall design scheme of the automatic transport device was obtained by adjusting these preliminary schemes. The design provided a solution to the possible interference phenomenon in automatic transportation and achieved the maximum reliability and safety.