European-wide nuclear generation facilities are constantly monitored and maintained to ensure performance and safety. These materials are widely used as protective, sealing or isolating coatings, on electrical cables but also for pipes. Among the aspects to be checked for Nuclear Power Plants (NPP) safety and long-term operation (LTO), the polymer ageing is crucial. Monitoring their integrity remains therefore a challenge. To this day, aging control methods generally consist of sampling (for example coring) and then performing a laboratory analysis. If this method meets the criteria of reliability, this is invasive, expansive, time-consuming, and restricted to human accessible areas. For example, inspection of a couple of hundred meters of water pipes costs 400,000€ every 18 months. Furthermore, It is also estimated that the Shutdown of a NPP costs 1,000,000€ per day.

The main objective of El-Peacetolero is to build a hand-held, low power, embedded optoelectronic system that can be used for in-situ real-time measurement, identification and diagnosis of the material state of aging polymers in an industrial environment.

A system performing on site non-destructive identification and diagnosis of the ageing state of polymers is badly needed to support modernisation, optimisation and efficient implementation of the new safety requirements of the European nuclear industry supply chain. El-Peacetolero has the potential for a huge impact :

• Within the nuclear industry, it will save time and money by implementing easy, real-time, non-destructive techniques for the identification and diagnosis of polymers.
• It will also have an impact on the security and safety of the industry as aging polymers on joints, paints and pipes can cause massive safety issues.
• These safety issues can also be transferred to other industries such as cabling on airplanes, where a technology such as El-Peacetolero could provide invaluable assistance in identifying potential problems and saving time, money and lives. Any industry that is reliant on polymer-based components will benefit from El-Peacetolero.

• Accelerated ageing of two use case polymers (Neoprene, HDPE)
• Creation of database of FTIR ATR measurement from a set of aged samples of these polymers
• Determination of an ageing threshold for El-Peacetolero prototype
• Data augmentation & Artificial Intelligence algorithms development
• Design and fabrication of an embedded optoelectronic system and two measurements heads:
• LED based Head : 2 µm < Wavelength < 5 µm
• QC Laser Head : 5 µm < Wavelength < 11 µm
• Radiation hardened prototype
• Mobile Robotic platform development: intervention holding El-Peacetolero prototype

Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH (FZJ) The Institute of Energy and Climate Research-Nuclear Waste Management and Reactor Safety (IEK-6), Germany; Universitat Jaume I  (UJI), Spain; Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V (FhG-IZFP), Germany; MIRSENSE (MIRS), France; ARTTIC, France; Électricité de France (EDF), France; CEA LIST, France; Sorbonne Université (SU) – Laboratoire Genie Electrique et Electronique de Paris (GeePs), France. The last partner (GeePs-SU) is the project coordinator.

Duration : September 2020 – February 2025

Budget : 3 652 170 €

EU Funding  : 2 999 236 €

Project coordinator:

Mohamed Ben Chouikha

mohamed.ben_chouikha@sorbonne-universite.fr

This project has received funding from the Euratom NFRP-2019-2020 under grant agreement No 945320.