The Role of a Remote Handling Facility in the Design Process of a Fusion Reactor

A physical Remote Handling (RH) test facility can play a key role in the Verification & Validation phase of the design and development of the Remote Handling System (RHS) of a fusion reactor and of the reactor itself. This key role is described in this paper, highlighting the achievements reachable in such a facility in support of the fusion reactor design and reporting the experience gained in the leading RH test facilities developed in the last decades. In the end, the project of an innovative RH test facility for fusion reactors, aimed at overcoming the limits of the already operative ones and the still present obstacles in the related scientific fields, is presented.