ROBOTICS & REMOTE TECHNOLOGY | AUTONOMOUS TRANSPORT waste transport Autonomous
Sellafield wants to use autonomous transport to allow it to make daily movements of waste around the site.
Digital Concepts Engineering Ltd is to provide proof of concept
THE UK’S ‘GAME CHANGERS’ INITIATIVE is an innovation programme that aims to find solutions for complex nuclear industry challenges. Jointly run by National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) and innovation specialists FIS360, it accepts applications and of all sizes and across all sectors to identify and develop the most promising technologies. In a statement on the Game Changers website, Hilary Royston- Bishop Research and Development Manager at Sellafield Ltd, said: “An organisation with the legacy and complexity of Sellafield needs innovation to succeed and accelerate the delivery of our over-arching mission of creating a clean and safe environment for future generations”. She added: “Through Game Changers, we have been able to prioritise and articulate our decommissioning challenges and reach out globally across diverse sectors. The programme has brought us expertise and technologies from many hundreds of organisations ranging from start-ups and small to medium enterprises (SMEs) to large businesses and academia.” Game Changers nurtures organisations and provides commercialisation mentoring, “enabling us to see the best of these technologies developed and demonstrated in active environments”.
A Game Changers challenge has recently funded a work
to the ‘proof of concept’ phase that would allow waste to be autonomously transported around the Sellafield site without human drivers. The challenge related to waste management on the Sellafield site, where Sellafield Ltd is building new long- term storage facility for existing nuclear inventory from a number of legacy stores across the site. This programme will increase the number of waste package journeys across the site, from monthly to daily. Currently, waste packages are loaded into wagons to be
transported across the site, and then driven under armed Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC) escort on the Sellafield site road network. Operations on the Sellafield site are complex and so are the logistics and work management planning requirements, which are assigned and agreed weeks in advance. As a result, it can take seven or eight weeks of planning to move a single package. Sellafield Ltd wants to use automated processes to
transport waste and product packages across the site to reduce its reliance on driver and vehicle availability and to allow it to step up the pace of transfer activities in the
Above: A new long-term storage facility for nuclear inventory from a number of legacy stores across the site will increase the number of waste package journeys across the Sellafield site from monthly to daily
22 | October 2024 |
www.neimagazine.com
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