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NREL's advanced distribution management system (ADMS) research helps utilities meet customer expectations of reliability, power quality, renewable energy use, data security, and resilience to natural disasters and other threats.
Today's water supply is built on a 20th century model of fresh water sources, centralized treatment, and wastewater discharge. But that model - especially in remote coastal communities or in disaster relief scenarios - is quickly becoming unsustainable. That's why researchers are looking to non-traditional water sources and new desalination technologies to provide our nation's industries and communities with a resilient, cost-effective water supply for the 21st century.
The world has seen a number of high-profile maritime disasters in recent months and years, and has felt the impact of them. At the same time, the world has also seen a number of high-profile cyberattacks. It has felt their impact, as well. And, likely no sector has been more affected by the maritime and cyber incidents than the energy sector, as fuel prices often spike or trough, and access to energy resources can become an instant source of concern, tension, or even conflict. As energy sectors—in all their forms—continue to rely on the maritime domain or even increase that reliance, they must be mindful that traditional maritime threats—like piracy, theft, and weather events—are not the only threats they face today. Maritime cybersecurity concerns are among the most potentially disruptive to energy-sector interests and, yet, are among the least understood and least addressed. This paper identifies nine areas in which the energy sector faces harmful cyber vulnerabilities in the maritime domain, to provide enough insight and examples to allow for action to be taken to reduce the risk of harm from these different vulnerabilities. The paper develops the example of offshore wind energy to model how to assess cyber considerations more fully. Ultimately, it concludes with a series of recommendations that offer policymakers, energy-sector actors, and security and law-enforcement professionals steps to minimize the exposure of the maritime energy sector to harmful cyberattacks.
With recent advances in the fields of satellite imagery and machine learning we now have the ability to develop explainable deep learning models that enhance critical infrastructure analysis. Funded through Idaho National Laboratory’s (INL) Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) office we are in the process of developing a deep learning model capable of identifying critical infrastructure facilities and embedded features within those facilities. Utilizing current limit of practice techniques in the machine learning areas of explainability and transfer learning our model, once complete, will have the capacity to be used on multiple different imagery data sets and produce results that not only classify critical infrastructure facilities, but also explain why a critical infrastructure facility was classified as a certain type of facility. These advancements eliminate the ‘black box’ approach deep learning models have had in the past, where a user will have to trust the conclusion of a model without understanding what reasoning when into the model’s classification process. They also expand a model’s usefulness, traditionally a deep learning model will have to use the same data set it was originally trained on. Given the long training times of deep learning models this is impractical in a number of scenarios. By utilizing transfer learning advancements, we are eliminating the need to train our model on the same data set it is then run on to classify critical infrastructure facilities. We are also enabling the analysis and classification of data sets that are potentially too small to be divided into a training and testing data set. Once completed this model can provide a foundation to enhanced critical infrastructure analysis, dependency analysis, and potential disaster relief efforts.
In recent years, an increasing number of grid disruptions due to intense weather events, natural disasters, and high peak loads resulted in increased interest in energy-resilient homes. Solar + storage (S+S) as an energy resiliency solution can provide continuity, onsite generation, and backup power during critical events. This project explored factory-installed solar plus storage (FISS) to overcome first cost and installation barriers and bring this resiliency solution to scale for single-family affordable and market-rate homebuyers. Guided by the principles of Lean manufacturing, the team explored how factories building high-performance zero energy modular homes can incorporate S+S into their existing construction system while improving quality and productivity and reducing the costs of the resilient energy system.
Variable resources like wind and solar are often seen as detriments to system resilience rather than benefits because they may not be available with the capacities or services required during a high-impact low-frequency (HILF) event, whether that is a physical threat, natural disaster, or cyber attack. However, resilience goals and metrics are inadequate for electric energy delivery systems with inverter-based resources. Examination of this topic reveals that renewable resources are well suited to combat many resilience hazards due to local resource availability. Metrics that demonstrate the resilience value of variable resources are presented and categorized for resource (wind, solar, storage, hybrid) and installation type (bulk utility scale, behind-the-meter, front-of-the-meter, isolated). Distributed and hybrid systems can further enhance resilience benefits my maximizing resource potential for a locality. A case study demonstrating quantitative resilience benefits from wind alone is provided for St. Mary's, AK, which concludes that hundreds of thousands of dollars are saved by the addition of a wind turbine in the face of realistic fuel shortage and extreme winter weather scenarios.
Microreactors, or small, transportable reactors with a capacity of 20 MWTH or less, are sought to provide heat and power for myriad applications in remote areas, military installations, emergency operations, humanitarian missions, and disaster relief zones. These small, transportable reactor designs, while offering many advantages, are largely untested and unproven. A non-nuclear system and component testing capability is needed to demonstrate to regulators that these designs are safe and to convince customers that the systems are robust, reliable, and efficient. Idaho National Laboratory has constructed the microreactor agile non-nuclear experimental test bed (MAGNET) to assist with the development, demonstration, and validation of microreactor components and systems. MAGNET will support microreactor technology maturation to reduce uncertainty and risk relative to the operation and deployment of this unique class of systems. Stakeholders for this test bed include microreactor developers, energy users, and regulators. Regulators will be engaged early in the design and testing to expedite regulatory approval and licensing.
The frequency and intensity of natural disasters (i.e. wildfires, storms, floods) has increased over recent decades. Extreme weather can often be linked to climate change, and human population expansion and urbanization have led to a growing risk. In particular floods due to large amounts of rainfall are of rising severity and are causing loss of life, destruction of buildings and infrastructure, erosion of arable land, and environmental hazards around the world. Expanding urbanization along rivers and creeks often includes opening flood plains for building construction and river straightening and dredging speeding up the flow of water. In a flood event, rapid response is essential which requires knowledge which buildings are susceptible to flooding and which roads are still accessible. To this aim, SpaceNet 8 is the first remote sensing machine learning training dataset combining building footprint detection, road network extraction, and flood detection covering 850km 2, including 32k buildings and 1,300km roads of which 13% and 15% are flooded, respectively.
NREL's advanced distribution management system (ADMS) research helps utilities meet customer expectations of reliability, power quality, renewable energy use, data security, and resilience to natural disasters and other threats.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) has been studying on MHI original High Temperature Gas cooled Reactor (HTGR), namely MHR-50/100, for commercialization with supported by JAEA. In the heat transfer system, steam generator (SG) is one of the most important components because it should be imposed a function of heat transfer from reactor power to steam turbine system and maintaining a nuclear grade boundary. Then we especially focused an effort of a design study on the SG having robustness against water ingress accident based on our design experience of PWR, FBR and HTGR. In this study, we carried out a sensitivity analysis from the view point of economic and plant efficiency. As a result, the SG design parameter of helium inlet/outlet temperature of 750 deg. C/300 deg. C, a side-by-side layout and one unit of SG attached to a reactor were selected. In the next, a design improvement of SG was carried out from the view point of securing the level of inherent safety without reliance on active steam dump system during water ingress accident considering the situation of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster on March 11, 2011. Finally, according to above basic design requirement to SG, we performed a conceptual design on adapting themes of SG structure improvement. (authors)
As of 2012, 23 units of nuclear power plants are in operation, but there is no experience of permanent shutdown and decommissioning of nuclear power plant in Korea. It is realized that, since late 1990's, improvement of the regulatory framework for decommissioning has been emphasized constantly from the point of view of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)'s safety standards. And it is known that now IAEA prepare the safety requirement on decommissioning of facilities, its title is the Safe Decommissioning of Facilities, General Safety Requirement Part 6. According to the result of IAEA's Integrated Regulatory Review Service (IRRS) mission to Korea in 2011, it was recommended that the regulatory framework for decommissioning should require decommissioning plans for nuclear installations to be constructed and operated and these plans should be updated periodically. In addition, after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in March of 2011, preparedness for early decommissioning caused by an unexpected severe accident became also important issues and concerns. In this respect, it is acknowledged that the regulatory framework for decommissioning of nuclear facilities in Korea need to be improved. First of all, we identify the current status and relevant issues of regulatory framework for decommissioning of nuclear power plants compared to the IAEA's safety standards in order to achieve our goal. And then the plan is to be established for improvement of regulatory framework for decommissioning of nuclear power plants in Korea. After dealing with it, it is expected that the revised regulatory framework for decommissioning could enhance the safety regime on the decommissioning of nuclear power plants in Korea in light of international standards. (authors)
This paper has a twofold objective. One is to analyze the current status of high-level nuclear waste disposal along with presentation of practical perspectives about the environmental issues involved. Present disposal designs and concepts are analyzed on a scientific basis and modifications to existing designs are proposed from the perspective of environmental safety. Other is to understand the aerosol formation in the atmosphere for the case of the leakage from the nuclear waste containers or a nuclear accident. Radio-nuclides released from the waste will attach themselves to the existing aerosols in the atmosphere along with formation of new aerosols. Anticipating the nuclear accident when a variety of radioactive aerosols will form and exist in the atmosphere, as a simple example, measurement of naturally existing radioactive aerosols are made in the atmosphere of Islamabad and Murree. A comparison with similar measurements in 3 cities of France is provided. Measurement of radionuclides in the atmosphere, their attachment to aerosols and follow up transport mechanisms are key issues in the nuclear safety. It is studied here how {sup 7}Be concentration in the atmospheric air varies in the capital city of Islamabad and a Himalaya foothill city of Murree (Pakistan). Present results are compared with recent related published results to produce a {sup 7}Be concentration versus altitude plot up to an altitude of 4000 m (a.s.l.). Origin and variance of {sup 7}Be concentration at different altitudes is discussed in detail. The relevance of results presented here with the evaluation of implications of Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear disasters has been discussed in a conclusive manner. It is the first international report of a joint collaboration/project. The project is being generalized to investigate and formulate a smooth waste storage and disposal policy. The project will address the fission and fusion waste reduction, its storage, its recycling, air, water and soil quality monitoring, and the final disposal with the major foci of dealing with related chemical, biogical, physical, geophysical, engineering, management and administration aspects. (authors)
On March 11, 2011, now two years ago, the magnitude 9.0 Great East Japan earthquake, Tohoku, hit off the Fukushima coast of Japan. While, of course, most of the outcome of this unprecedented natural and manmade disaster was a negative, both in Japan and worldwide, there have been some extremely invaluable lessons learned and new emergency recovery technologies and systems developed. As always, the mother of invention is necessity. Among these developments has been the development and full-scale implementation of proven isotope specific media (ISMs) with the intent of surgically removing specific hazardous isotopes for the purpose of minimizing dose to workers and the environment. The first such ISMs to be deployed at the Fukushima site were those removing cesium (Cs-137) and iodine (I-129). Since deployment on June 17, 2011, along with treated cooling water recycle, some 70% of the curies in the building liquid wastes have been removed by the Kurion system alone. The current levels of cesium are now only 2% of the original levels. Such an unprecedented, 'external cooling system' not only allowed the eventual cold shut down of the reactors in mid-December, 2011, but has allowed workers to concentrate on the cleanup of other areas of the site. Water treatment will continue for quite some time due to continued leakage into the buildings and the eventual goal of cleaning up the reactors and fuel pools themselves. With the cesium removal now in routine operation, other isotopes of concern are likely to become priorities. One such isotope is that of strontium, and yttrium (Sr-90 and Y-90), which is still at original levels causing further dose issues as well as impediments to discharge of the treated waste waters. For over a year now, a new synthetic strontium specific media has been under development and testing both in our licensed facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, but also in confirmatory tests by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) in Japan for Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). The tests have proven quite successful, even in high salt conditions, and, with loading and dose calculations being completed, will be proposed to add to the existing cesium system. There is no doubt, as high gamma isotopes are removed, other recalcitrant isotopes such as this will require innovative removal media, systems and techniques. Also coming out of this international effort are other ISM media and systems that can be applied more broadly to both Commercial Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) as well as in Department of Energy (DOE) applications. This cesium and strontium specific media has further been successfully tested in 2012 at a Magnox station in the UK. The resulting proposed mitigation systems for pond and vault cleanup look quite promising. An extremely unusual ISM for carbon 14 (C-14), nickel (Ni-63) and cesium (Cs-137) has been developed for Diablo Canyon NPP for dose reduction testing in their fuel pool. These media will be deployed in Submersible Media Filter (SMF) and Submersible Columns (SC) systems adapted to standard Tri-Nuclear{sup R} housings common in the U.S. and UK. External Vessel Systems (mini-Fukushima) have also been developed as a second mitigation system for D and D and outages. Finally, technetium (Tc- 99) specific media developed for the Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) recycle or condensate (secondary) waste streams (WM 2011) are being further perfected and tested for At-Tank Tc-99 removal, as well as At Tank Cs media. In addition to the on-going media development, systems for deploying such media have developed over the last year and are in laboratory- and full-scale testing. These systems include the fore mentioned Submersible Media Filters (SMF), Submersible Columns (SC) and external pilot- and full-scale, lead-lag, canister systems. This paper will include the media development and testing, as well as that of the deployment systems themselves. (authors)
At 2:46 PM, on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in eastern Japan, people were spending an ordinary afternoon. The earthquake had a magnitude of 9.0, the fourth largest ever recorded in the world. Avery large number of aftershocks were felt after the initial earthquake. More than 100 of them had a magnitude of over 6.0. There were very few injured or dead at this point. The large earthquake caused by this enormous crustal deformation spawned a rare and enormous tsunami that crashed down 30-40 minutes later. It easily cleared the high levees, washing away cars and houses and swallowing buildings of up to three stories in height. The largest tsunami reading taken from all regions was 40 meters in height. This tsunami reached the West Coast of the United States and the Pacific coast of South America, with wave heights of over two meters. It was due to this tsunami that the disaster became one of a not imaginable scale, which saw the number of dead or missing reach about 20,000 persons. The enormous tsunami headed for 15 nuclear power plants on the Pacific coast, but 11 power plants withstood the tsunami and attained cold shutdown. The flood height of the tsunami that struck each power station ranged to a maximum of 15 meters. The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Units experienced the largest and the cores of three reactors suffered meltdown. As a result, more than 160,000 residents were forced to evacuate, and are still living in temporary accommodation. The main focus of this presentation is on what happened at the Fukushima Daiichi, and how station personnel responded to the accident, with considerable international support. A year after the Fukushima Daiichi accident, Japan is in the process of leveraging the lessons learned from the accident to further improve the safety of nuclear power facilities and regain the trust of society. In this connection, not only international organizations, including IAEA, and WANO, but also governmental organizations and nuclear industry representatives from various countries, have been evaluating what happened at Fukushima Daiichi. Support from many countries has contributed to successfully stabilizing the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. International cooperation is required as Japan started along the long road to decommissioning the reactors. Such cooperation with the international community would achieve the decommissioning of the damaged reactors. Finally, recovery plans by the Japanese government to decontaminate surrounding regions have been started in order to get residents back to their homes as early as possible. Looking at the world's nuclear power industry, there are currently approximately 440 reactors in operation and 60 under construction. Despite the dramatic consequences of the Fukushima Daiichi catastrophe it is expected that the importance of nuclear power generation will not change in the years to come. Newly accumulated knowledge and capabilities must be passed on to the next generation. This is the duty put upon us and which is one that we must embrace.
Nuclear energy generates significant reliable baseload electricity, yet many citizens in countries with nuclear power do not know the facts and benefits this clean energy source provides. For much of its history, the nuclear energy industry has been perceived as secretive and protective. Anti-nuclear activists use this general lack of public knowledge to sensationalise events, spread misinformation, and play on people's emotions. Yet, the nuclear energy industry has done little to combat these falsehoods imposed on the general public. Support for nuclear energy, or lack thereof, is even more pronounced after the extraordinary natural disasters and ensuing nuclear incident in Japan earlier this year, making proactive outreach to restore public trust even more important than before. The industry must inform and educate at all levels to dispel the falsehoods and enable clear, rational decision-making by government officials, business leaders and the general public, if it wants to grow and provide clean energy for the future. AREVA understands that this community outreach and education are just the first steps toward helping clean energy sources grow. We know that energy demand and security means we need to utilize every clean energy source available. We must start the education process from pre-school age to encourage children to enter science, technology, engineering and math curriculums. We must maintain regular community dialog and open discussions and operate in a safe manner, because in the long run, it is these community members who will help ensure energy security for the country. These stakeholders have a strong voice, a voice that can be heard locally, and if necessary, a voice that can impact the future of nuclear energy worldwide. As always, our industry is committed to the relentless pursuit of ever safer nuclear power. The nuclear industry as a whole must restore and win back trust. But the only way to restore this trust is by working together as an industry to engage in open discussion and dialogue. It is only by working together as an industry that we can ensure a safe, clean air future for generations to come, no matter where in the world we live. (authors)
Management of the uranium legacy is accompanied with environmental impact intensity of which depends on the amount of the waste generated, the extent of that waste localization and environmental spreading. The question is: how hazardous is such impact on the environment and human health? The criterion for safety assurance is adequate regulation of the uranium legacy. Since the establishment of the uranium industry, the well done regulatory system operates in the FMBA of Russia. Such system covers inter alia, the uranium legacy. This system includes the extent laboratory network of independent control and supervision, scientific researches, regulative practices. The current Russian normative and legal basis of the regulation and its application practice has a number of problems relating to the uranium legacy, connected firstly with the environmental remediation. To improve the regulatory system, the urgent tasks are: -To introduce the existing exposure situation into the national laws and standards in compliance with the ICRP system. - To develop criteria for site remediation and return, by stages, to uncontrolled uses. The similar criteria have been developed within the Russian-Norwegian cooperation for the purpose of remediation of the sites for temporary storage of SNF and RW. - To consider possibilities and methods of optimization for the remediation strategies under development. - To separate the special category - RW resulted from uranium ore mining and dressing. The current Russian RW classification is based on the waste subdivision in terms of the specific activities. Having in mind the new RW-specific law, we receive the opportunity to separate some special category - RW originated from the uranium mining and milling. Introduction of such category can simplify significantly the situation with management of waste of uranium mining and milling processes. Such approach is implemented in many countries and approved by IAEA. The category of 'RW originated from uranium mining and milling' is to be introduced as the legal acts and regulatory documents. The recent ICRP recommendations provide the flexible approaches for solving of such tasks. The FMBA of Russia recognizes the problems of radiation safety assurance related to the legacy of the former USSR in the uranium mining industry. Some part of the regulatory problems assumes to be solved within the EurAsEC inter-state target program 'Reclamation of the territories of the EurAsEC member states affected by the uranium mining and milling facilities'. Using the example of the uranium legacy sites in Kyrgyz and Tajikistan which could result in the tran-boundary disasters and require urgent reclamation, the experience will be gained to be used in other states as well. Harmonization of the national legislations and regulative documents on radiation safety assurance is envisaged. (authors)
This paper presents the results of research activities aimed at creation of a principally new LRW distilling treatment method. The new process is based on the instantaneous evaporation method widely used in distillation units. The main difference of the proposed process is that the vapor condensation is conducted without using heat exchangers in practically ideal mode by way of direct contacting in a vapor-liquid system. This process is conducted in a specially designed ejector unit in supersonic mode. Further recuperation of excess heat of vaporization is carried out in a standard heat exchanger. Such an arrangement of the process, together with use of the barometric height principle, allows to carry out LRW evaporation under low temperatures, which enables to use excess heat from NPS for heating initial LRW. Thermal calculations and model experiments have revealed that, in this case, the expenditure of energy for LRW treatment by distilling will not exceed 3 kilowatt-hour/m{sup 3}, which is comparable with the reverse-osmosis desalination method. Besides, the proposed devices are 4 to 5 times less metal-intensive than standard evaporation units. These devices are also characterized by versatility. Experiments have revealed that the new method can be used for evaporation of practically any types of LRW, including those containing a considerable amount of oil products. Owing to arrangement of the evaporation process at low temperatures, the new devices are not sensitive to 'scale formation'. This is why, they can be used for concentrating brines of up to 500-600 g/l. New types of such evaporating devices can be required both for LRW treatment processes at nuclear-power plants under design and for treating 'non-standard' LRW with complex physicochemical and radionuclide composition resulting from the disaster at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant.) As a result of accidents at nuclear energy objects, as it has recently happened at NPP 'Fukushima-1', personnel faces the necessity to take emergency measures and to use marine water for cooling of reactor zone in contravention of the technological regulations. In these cases significant amount of liquid radioactive wastes of complex physicochemical composition is being generated, the purification of which by traditional methods is close to impossible. According to the practice of elimination of the accident after-effects at NPP 'Fukushima' there are still no technical means for the efficient purification of liquid radioactive wastes of complex composition like marine water from radionuclides. Therefore development of state-of-the-art highly efficient facilities capable of fast and safe purification of big amounts of liquid radioactive wastes of complex physicochemical composition from radionuclides turns to be utterly topical problem. Cesium radionuclides, being extremely dangerous for the environment, present over 90% of total radioactivity contained in liquid radioactive wastes left as a result of accidents at nuclear power objects. For the purpose of radiation accidents aftereffects liquidation VNIIHT proposes to create a plant for LRW reprocessing, consisting of 4 major technological modules: Module of LRW pretreatment to remove mechanical and organic impurities including oil products; Module of sorption purification of LWR by means of selective inorganic sorbents; Module of reverse osmotic purification and desalination; Module of deep evaporation of LRW concentrates. The first free modules are based on completed technological and designing concepts implemented by VNIIHT in the framework of LLRW Project in the period of 2000-2001 in Russia for comprehensive treatment of LWR of atomic fleet. These industrial plants proved to be highly efficient and secure during their long operation life. Module of deep evaporation is a new technological development. It will ensure conduction of evaporation and purification of LRW of different physicochemical composition, including those containing hardness salts, resulted in generation of LRW concentrate 300-600 g/l. The method is based on utilization of supersonic ejector for intensification of thermal physic processes and performance of evaporation in brine recycling mode. All proposed technological solutions are totally based on patented Russian developments. Proposed work will allow to construct modular plants, which will be totally prepared for efficient purification of any types of liquid radioactive wastes from radionuclides in case of force majeure. According to proposed scheme concentration level of cesium radionuclides in safe-for-storage form will make up not less than 5000. With respect to purification from cesium radionuclides of liquid radioactive wastes stored at NPP 'Fukushima' about 10 t of inorganic sorbents, loaded in 160 protective filter-containers, will be required for solving this problem. The amount of secondary wastes will be reduced approximately in 5 times in comparison with traditional schemes, applied in purification of secondary LRW of Fukushima-1 by Areva (France) and Kurion (USA) companies. All units of modular plants will be constructed and manufactured as totally automated, providing their twenty-four-hour safe operation. Modular design will ensure efficiency and let optimize the costs of secondary LRW treatment. In order to ensure off-line operation in emergency conditions the plant should be equipped with auxiliary modules: energy and ventilation ones. Under normal conditions these modules can be stored in 'mothballed' condition at special warehouses under the authority of federal bodies. It will be reasonable to choose required transport facilities, the most suitable for transportation of modules to target destination beforehand, using vessel classification list.
There is an increasing interest in developing cameras for surveillance systems to monitor nuclear facilities or nuclear waste storages. Particularly, for today's and the next generation of nuclear facilities increasing safety requirements consecutive to Fukushima Daiichi's disaster have to be considered. For some applications, radiation tolerance needs to overcome doses in the MGy(SiO{sub 2}) range whereas the most tolerant commercial or prototypes products based on solid state image sensors withstand doses up to few kGy. The objective of this work is to present the radiation hardening strategy developed by our research groups to enhance the tolerance to ionizing radiations of the various subparts of these imaging systems by working simultaneously at the component and system design levels. Developing radiation-hardened camera implies to combine several radiation-hardening strategies. In our case, we decided not to use the simplest one, the shielding approach. This approach is efficient but limits the camera miniaturization and is not compatible with its future integration in remote-handling or robotic systems. Then, the hardening-by-component strategy appears mandatory to avoid the failure of one of the camera subparts at doses lower than the MGy. Concerning the image sensor itself, the used technology is a CMOS Image Sensor (CIS) designed by ISAE team with custom pixel designs used to mitigate the total ionizing dose (TID) effects that occur well below the MGy range in classical image sensors (e.g. Charge Coupled Devices (CCD), Charge Injection Devices (CID) and classical Active Pixel Sensors (APS)), such as the complete loss of functionality, the dark current increase and the gain drop. We'll present at the conference a comparative study between these radiation-hardened pixel radiation responses with respect to conventional ones, demonstrating the efficiency of the choices made. The targeted strategy to develop the complete radiation hard camera electronics will be exposed. Another important element of the camera is the optical system that transports the image from the scene to the image sensor. This arrangement of glass-based lenses is affected by radiations through two mechanisms: the radiation induced absorption and the radiation induced refractive index changes. The first one will limit the signal to noise ratio of the image whereas the second one will directly affect the resolution of the camera. We'll present at the conference a coupled simulation/experiment study of these effects for various commercial glasses and present vulnerability study of typical optical systems to radiations at MGy doses. The last very important part of the camera is the illumination system that can be based on various technologies of emitting devices like LED, SLED or lasers. The most promising solutions for high radiation doses will be presented at the conference. In addition to this hardening-by-component approach, the global radiation tolerance of the camera can be drastically improve by working at the system level, combining innovative approaches eg. for the optical and illumination systems. We'll present at the conference the developed approach allowing to extend the camera lifetime up to the MGy dose range. (authors)