OFF THE SHELF | DECOMMISSIONING & DECONTAMINATION


useful functionality, which can be modified to suit specific decommissioning challenges. Some modifications are about preparing the


technology for the environment, for example through radiation protection and contamination prevention. Others are about creating new functionality for specific decommissioning tasks, such as upgrading quadruped control software so its manipulator arm can swab the curved surface of a waste drum. Modifications can be significant. For example, RAICo has developed digital sandboxes for simulation, training and operations, which use Unreal Engine to create hyper-realistic 3D environments, combined with software developed in- house and built around the end users’ needs. Whilst not strictly off-the-shelf, this is a general purpose tool that mixes commercial and bespoke technologies, and can be adapted to a wide range of decommissioning use cases.


Ensuring commercial tech meet nuclear needs Whilst commercial technologies are reducing an enormous amount of bespoke development work, they still need to work in the high stakes world of nuclear decommissioning. Ours is a highly regulated industry, and technologies must comply with site and regulator expectations on safety. That means development of modifications must be done


in close collaboration with end users on decommissioning sites like Sellafield, and working with them to perform rigorous testing of each development in sandboxed environments, before gradually progressing to non-active, then active demonstrations, and finally deployments. At each stage we need to show that risk is ‘as low as reasonably practicable’ (ALARP). That includes not only meeting site safety processes, but training, adoption, and workforce support. That is only possible through close collaboration with


technology deployment groups on the sites – the people who understand the site-specific challenges and have the knowledge and expertise to lead the on-site deployments. And testing is not just physical. Integration with IT and cyber requirements is essential. Ensuring data interoperability between vendor platforms and NDA estate systems is a persistent deployment challenge. And once it’s proven at one site, learnings need to be shared, and technology adapted for different environments. This is far more efficient than developing technology from scratch, but it is still a job to ensure each technology goes through the site’s proper safety processes. Nonetheless, learning from one site vastly speed up deployments on subsequent sites. ‘Off-the-shelf’ is therefore something of a simplification.


Adaptation is required in various degrees to make these commercial technologies viable for nuclear. But the point is that general-purpose innovations have arisen in recent years that hold enormous potential – well beyond what any one nuclear site could develop in house.


A moment for platform technologies What is driving this ‘platform’ approach to solving shared challenges? A big driver is of course technological possibilities. Recent advances in robotics and digital technologies make them more practical. The current generation of commercial robots have more fine-tuned controls, often with haptic feedback, and high degrees of freedom, enabling dexterous tasks with high reliability. Advances in reinforcement learning enable robots to


learn from tasks and improve, without laborious human programming for every scenario. Advances in digital twins and VR (much driven by the video game industry) have hugely increased what is possible through simulation and data driven analysis. More mundanely, this is all much easier in a world with the IT backbone to support remote working, online communication, and secure data sharing between sites. But NDA strategy has also been critical. As technology


makes more possible, the NDA has emphasised ever greater collaboration, open innovation, and use of common digital tools. The funding of the RAICo programme since 2022 by the NDA and others is of course a prime example of this ambition.


Can we continue to benefit? This article has described a few examples of how commercial robots and digital technologies are helping solve decommissioning challenges. Impressive though progress has been, it is just the start. In the commercial world, such technologies are advancing at a mind-boggling pace. Embodied intelligence – the integration of AI models with


physical robotic systems – will allow robots to follow voice commands and learn about their environment. As an example, the Figure 03 humanoid robot, launched in October 2025, claims to be capable of tasks comparable to those performed with human hands, and can learn from watching and listening to people. We are keeping a close eye on such innovations. Meanwhile, AI is advancing in all sorts of areas, from pattern recognition to data analysis, to document management, all of which hold promise in decommissioning. Will decommissioning continue to benefit from all this innovation? Will this collaborative approach to investigating and deploying new technologies still hold as tech enters new territories? AI powered robots that make their own decisions in a


nuclear environment will of course ring alarm bells. That doesn’t mean there aren’t safe ways to deploy them, though they may be different to how things are done now. Just as we must keep an eye on commercial innovations, so must we review our own processes to check they still serve us as technology changes. We will probably always be a little behind fast-paced industries like self-driving vehicles, which is no bad thing. Those industries will provide lessons on how to assess new generations of technology. When confronted with a potentially game-changing


technology, we will need to ask ‘how can we benefit from this safely’ rather than ‘how does this fit into our current processes’. That needs vision and flexibility at all levels, and clear communication to everyone involved. Sellafield Ltd’s decommissioning programme expects to run for 100 years – in that time commercial technologies will advance in ways we can’t even imagine. If technological change is adopted adequately, there is a high potential of reducing the forecasted 100 years.


The promise of commercial innovation Commercial technology holds enormous promise for nuclear decommissioning, as well as for the emerging fusion industry. Progress in recent years has shown we can be ambitious in embracing the possibilities of new off-the-shelf technologies, without compromising safety. If we continue to do so, we can accelerate nuclear decommissioning, enhance safety, and make huge savings to the cost of UK nuclear decommissioning, and so to the taxpayer. ■


www.neimagazine.com | February 2026 | 19


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