New partnership pays off

Sellafield’s latest Game Changers partnership venture, this time with Magnox, is proving fruitful with the announcement of eight projects to receive feasibility funding.

Both Sellafield and Magnox, responsible for the safe clean-up of 12 nuclear sites across the UK, share common decommissioning challenges. In their first joint Game Changers venture they issued a challenge seeking novel technologies for the long-term monitoring of stored waste packages.

The monitoring techniques already used by Magnox and Sellafield are deemed suitable under current best practice. Both organisations are keen however to explore innovative technologies that will offer improved monitoring, including providing an indication of waste package condition in the latter stages of storage and helping to reduce operator dose through remote monitoring.

Six organisations from across the UK and two from Europe have been chosen to develop their promising proposals with Game Changers support.

Magnox feasibility funding goes to:

• Assystem (Blackburn, Lancashire) - development of a crane deployable inspection cassette
• Scantron Industrial Products (Taunton, Somerset) - surface defect characterisation
• University of Bristol - development of a nuclear vault inspection cassette
• University of Strathclyde - multi-sensor inspection of high activity waste packages

Sellafield feasibility funding is awarded to:

• Aachen Institute for Nuclear Training (Aachen, Germany) - oxygen and hydrogen measurement of waste packages and package imaging
• Alsymex (Merignac, France) - development of modular inspection climber and crawler device
• Lynkeos (Glasgow) - muography for monitoring waste packages
• Resolve Robotics (Cleator Moor, Cumbria) - in-situ deployment of COTS sensors for waste container inspection