One problem with inspecting nuclear power plants is the risk of radiation exposure for the workers. Robots and drones have been developed to allow inspection without the need for human beings to go into dangerous areas. Now a company called Flyability has launched the Elios 2 RAD which is an indoor drone that contains a radiation sensor. This new drone was specifically designed for the purpose of inspecting nuclear power plants.
     Patrick Thévoz is the CEO of Flyability. He said, “The Elios 2 RAD represents the first chapter in our efforts to create indoor drones targeted specifically for each of our key verticals, accelerating our mission to use robots instead of people for dangerous indoor inspection jobs. The Elios 2 RAD has the potential to significantly reduce the need for inspectors to be exposed to harmful radiation or to the hazards of confined space entry for the purposes of conducting routine inspections.”
     Nuclear power stations have a protocol for maintaining low radiation exposure. This protocol is referred to as the As Low As Reasonably Achievable (ALARA) requirements. The Elios RAD 2 is designed to help staff in their mission to reduce radiation exposure as much as possible. This is accomplished by allowing the Elios RAD 2 to substitute for human personnel where possible to obtain visual and radiation data. It also provides high-quality data for planning interventions that do require exposure so that such exposure can be limited as much as possible.
     The Elios RAD 2 is equipped with a Geiger-Muller detector and can detect radiation while being flown by the Flyability’s piloting app. After the drone makes an inspection flight, the Flyability’s Inspector 3.0 software can be used to map the radiation along the flight path. It can show the exact location of dangerous radiation levels inside a nuclear facility. Operators can also play back the inspection flight with Inspector 3.0 utilizing it to display dose rate measurements synchronously over the video footage. Flyability currently has a strong presence in nuclear facilities around the world where its Elios 2 has been successfully tested up to eight hundred R/H.
     Nuclear inspectors have reported that use of the Elios 2 has saved them over a hundred thousand dollars in a single inspection flight by reducing required downtimes and avoiding the need for the construction of scaffolding and other expensive temporary structures. Inspectors say that these results are repeatable and a regular part of the new workflows the Elios 2 enables.
    Alexandre Meldem is the VP of Sales at Flyability Inc. He said, “Over 80% of U.S. nuclear operators already use Flyability’s indoor drones for their visual inspections. Now we can expand that support by allowing engineers to collect actionable, high quality dose data. Helping nuclear inspectors collect this data remotely means that less people will be exposed to the potential harm of radiation.”
     Last year, Flyability released footage of a flight taken with its Elios 2 drone at the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine. The goal of that mission was to collect visual data inside the ruins of Reactor 5 which was never activated. They wanted to confirm that no nuclear fuel rods were present. Now, with the new Elios 2 RAD, it will be possible to return to Chernobyl to record the amount of radiation present in the whole site.