Overview of progress on the European DEMO remote maintenance strategy

•The remote maintenance strategy is applicable to the range of tokamak and component options currently under consideration in Europe•The remote maintenance development work is concentrating on the application and limits of the immature technologies that pose the greatest risk to the feasibility of the maintenance strategy•Position control during the handling of the in-vessel components is one of the areas of high risk and a system is being developed and will be tested prior to concept design to demonstrate the feasibility and capability of a system capable of real time incorporation of changing kinematic data provided by a structural simulator running in parallel•In-vessel recovery and rescue and the pipe joining technology form two more of the high risk areas where developments are being concentrated