Enabling Visual inspection in nuclear environments

For the high radiation environments experienced in nuclear power plants, nuclear fuel recycling facilities, conventional vision cameras and lenses have a very short life due to radiation damage.

Working closely with specialist camera manufacturer – Custom Cameras Ltd (Wells, UK) – Resolve Optics has supplied non-browning lenses to help them provide a turnkey solution for monitoring operations remotely in high radiation environments.

Tony Moon of Custom Cameras commented “Our radiation resistant cameras are used in a growing number of applications within the nuclear power industry. In designing cameras for this challenging environment, we have to consider the tolerance to radiation of all components as well as the overall design. We choose to use fixed focus and zoom non-browning lenses from Resolve Optics because of their in-depth knowledge of the requirements of optics used in a nuclear environment, willingness and ability to adapt designs to suit customer requirements, excellent technical support and competitive pricing,”

Resolve Optics offers a range of non-browning (radiation resistant) zoom lenses that may be adapted for application optimised use in environments subject to radiation. All optical elements within Resolve Optics’ non-browning lens designs are made using cerium oxide doped glass or synthetic silica enabling them to withstand radiation doses of up to 100,000,000 rads and temperatures up to 55°C without discolouration or degradation of performance. All these radiation resistant lenses provide high image resolution and minimum geometric distortion from 400 to 750nm. Resolve Optics non-browning lenses are designed for use with CCTV and CMOS vision cameras, and with Newvicon and Chalnicon tubes.