Businesses in Cumbria are among 14 who have been awarded contracts to come up with innovative approaches to remotely sort and segregate radioactive waste.
The ‘Sort and Seg’ innovation competition, worth £3.9 million in total, was launched in July
2020.
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) – in partnership with Magnox Ltd,
Sellafield Ltd and Innovate UK – set the challenge of coming up with proposals for using
autonomous technology to sort and segregate mixed radioactive wastes at the UK’s oldest
nuclear sites.
The first phase of the competition is now complete and contracts, worth up to £60k each,
have been awarded to 14 consortia that will now come up with feasibility studies for their
proposals, including robotics, advanced sensors and artificial intelligence.
The NDA’s Head of Innovation, Sara Huntingdon, said: “The reaction to ‘Sort and Seg’ has
been incredible – we have received the best response we’ve ever had for this kind
competition.
“It’s really exciting that most of the successful organisations are bringing in experience and
ideas from other sectors and I’m really looking forward to working together with our partners
and with all the winners to see how these ideas develop.”
Competitions like this are an important way of engaging our supply chain, encouraging
diversity of thinking and finding innovative techniques and technologies from other sectors to
help deliver the NDA’s decommissioning mission and help meet the aims of the Nuclear
Sector Deal.
Derek Allen, Innovation Lead, Energy Clean Growth and Infrastructure Lead at Innovate UK,
said: “We are delighted to be working with the NDA again to help drive innovation into the
nuclear decommissioning supply chain and deliver things faster, cheaper and safer.
“The response to the competition was excellent and some really exciting projects have been
funded. There are some great examples of technology transfer and I look forward to seeing
these innovative projects progress over the next few months.”
The initial feasibility studies will be delivered in May, with the winners competing for a
number of contracts – each worth up to £900k – for 15-month ‘demonstrator projects’.
The contracts to develop feasibility studies have been awarded to:
- Barrnon Ltd
- AB5 Consulting Ltd
- Jacobs Clean Energy Ltd
- A.N. Technology Ltd
- Atkins Ltd
- Cavendish Nuclear Ltd
- Chilton Computing Ltd
- Create Technologies Ltd
- Delkia Ltd
- EDF Energy R&D Centre Ltd
- Forth Engineering (Cumbria) Ltd
- Nuvia Ltd
- Red Marine Engineering Ltd
- Veolia Nuclear Solutions Ltd
