| GLOBAL NUCLEAR


Safer, faster and cheaper


A winning solution in the quest for a better way to dismantle radioactive facilities at Sellafield


MANY COUNTRIES AROUND THE WORLD are grappling with the financial and environmental liabilities from legacy nuclear assets. The pressure is on the decommissioning industry to do the job safer, faster and cheaper. This means removing workers as much as possible from


the hazard, while improving efficiency and reducing cost. In the United Kingdom, government and industry has


agreed a Nuclear Sector Deal under which the supply chain has undertaken to achieve a 20% reduction in the cost of decommissioning legacy facilities by 2030. The U.K.’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) launched an £8.5 million competition to find innovative technologies that could be combined into a single, seamless process to help dismantle some of the most radioactive facilities at Sellafield, Europe’s most complex nuclear site. Jacobs delivered the winning solution with proposals for


new ways to decommission radioactive cells, formerly used to process spent nuclear fuel, which are in an unknown condition but are highly likely to be hazardous for humans to enter.


In launching the Integrated Innovation for Nuclear


Decommissioning competition, the NDA’s aim was for industry to come up with an integrated system capable of establishing what is inside scores of reprocessing cells, measuring radioactivity, accessing spaces that have been sealed for years, cutting up the contents (including large vessels and many miles of pipework), segregating the waste, then safely removing it for treatment and storage. The task was to address the full lifecycle of a


decommissioning project from initial characterization and planning through to de-plant and waste packaging, with all aspects of the process to be considered and relevant technology demonstrated. Progress was monitored but there was significant freedom to develop ideas and conduct unrestricted experiments. Jacobs’ team of nuclear technology specialists brought


together innovative small and medium sized enterprises, academic and research organizations, and technology developers with the capability to truly challenge the conventional decommissioning process. As project lead and system integrator, Jacobs was often


required to draw the best thinking from these innovative companies whilst supporting them to understand the implicit and explicit problems faced while addressing the decommissioning challenge. The solution combined near-to-market cutting edge


Above: A process vessel is lowered to the ground on a bed of inflatable balls


20 |


sensors with advanced analytics for handling live, real-time data, which was designed on the basis that decommissioning is fundamentally a change management


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28