Aberdeen-based Wood Group (
www.woodgroup.com) has secured Government backing to help bring innovative technologies to the field of nuclear decommissioning.
The energy and industrial services company said it was leading research to make nuclear decommissioning “safer, faster and more cost-effective” by applying new technologies developed for space exploration, car production and medicine.
It has been awarded funding worth around £1.5 million — from the UK Government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and Innovate UK — after winning a major competition to find “the best new ideas”.
Wood’s project and four others were selected from a shortlist of 15.
Wood Group and its supply chain will combine new data and control systems with ‘state of the art’ robotics to design a demonstrator system for cleaning and dismantling highly radio-active rooms or “cells” at the Sellafield nuclear decommissioning site in Cumbria.
The technologies used in the project include: material-handling systems designed to reduce the risks of working at height; “mixed reality” headsets; a multi-fingered gripper that allows robots to grasp different objects; and a navigation system (designed for missions to Mars) that enables autonomous mapping where human access is impossible.
Wood’s research partners are Airbus Defence and Space, Clicks and Links, Damavan Imaging SAS, Digital Concepts Engineering, IS-Instruments, I3D Robotics, the University of Lancaster, the University of Salford, Kawasaki UK and TWI.
Bob MacDonald, chief executive of Wood’s specialist technical solutions business, said: “Our innovative proposal for a fully remote solution removes the operator from a hazardous environment and is adaptable enough to tackle different tasks, many of which present unique challenges.”
Melanie Brownridge, the NDA’s head of technology, said the response had been so promising that the total amount available to the chosen projects has been increased from £3 million to £8.5 million.