The University of Manchester is to head up a consortium to build the next generation of robots for use at nuclear sites: this includes the University of Birmingham and the University of the West of England — plus industrial partners Sellafield Ltd, EDF Energy, the UK Atomic Energy Authority and the NuGen group.

It has received funding worth £4.6 million from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

The University of Manchester’s Barry Lennox said: “This programme of work will enable us to fundamentally improve RAS — reliability, availability and serviceability — capabilities, allowing technologies to be reliably deployed in harsh environments and keeping humans away from radiation.

“Within the next five years, our researchers will produce prototype robots that will be trialled in both active and inactive environments.

“It is anticipated that these trials will include using robotic manipulators to autonomously sort and segregate waste materials and using multiple robots — working collaboratively — to ‘characterise’ facilities that may not have been accessed for 40 years or more. The technology will also have potential for improving the robots used in other hostile environments — such as space, sub-sea and mining.”

The cost of cleaning up the UK’s existing nuclear facilities has been estimated at £95-219 billion over the next 120 years. Professor Lennox added: “Present robotics technology is simply not capable of completing many of the tasks that will be required.”