COVER STORY | ROBOTICS & REMOTE TECHNOLOGY LongOps robotics
NEI learns more about LongOps, the new international programme for robotics in nuclear decommissioning and fusion
Above: A UK-Japanese research alliance is looking to develop long-reach robotics
LONGOPS IS A NEW £12 million UK-Japanese research and development programme to explore and extend the functions of digital robotic technologies for use in nuclear decommissioning. The project will focus particularly on the digital tools used to control long-reach robotics in long- term operations — hence it is known as ‘LongOps’. The key theme is the development of digital twins — a set of technologies including virtual reality (VR) and simulations of robotics that pair the virtual and physical worlds. In nuclear decommissioning, these can enable strategy planning, training, remote operations, storage and analysis of data, including forecasting of maintenance events and potential operational issues. The aspiration is to create capability and knowledge to
enable nuclear end users to become intelligent customers of products and services in this rapidly emerging field. The project is also expected to result in direct benefits such as employment opportunities, advances in ‘fusion-adjacent’ technologies and up-skilling of robotics operations capability in the UK and Japan. RACE — the UK Atomic Energy Authority’s centre for
Remote Applications in Challenging Environments, based in Culham, Oxfordshire — is leading the LongOps project on behalf of a collaboration funded equally by the UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), Japan’s Tepco and UK Research & Innovation (UKRI).
26 | August 2021 |
www.neimagazine.com
Safer, faster, cheaper decommissioning The delivery of the LongOps programme comes at a crucial time in the world of nuclear decommissioning. In Japan, the Fukushima Daiichi power plant is stable, including the four units severely affected by the earthquake in March 2011, and Tepco has presented an action plan for decommissioning. In the UK, Sellafield Ltd in Cumbria is engaging with industry to consider how to make best use of robotics and artificial intelligence to conduct decommissioning in a more effective and efficient manner. That includes the Windscale Pile 1 reactor, which was damaged by fire in 1957. In Culham in Oxfordshire, the largest operational fusion experiment in the world, the Joint European Torus (JET), is nearing the end of its life and will face first-of-a- kind decommissioning challenges. LongOps technologies will open more routes to safer,
faster and cheaper decommissioning. It will also promote cost-effective reactor design for fusion and fission.
High-profile challenges Legacy nuclear and fusion facilities are complex large- scale projects that are time-intensive to decommission safely.
Windscale Pile 1, Fukushima Daiichi and JET are some of the highest-profile use-cases for emerging
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