The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority – including Sellafield Ltd and Magnox Ltd – has teamed up with Innovate UK to call on companies to come up with new ideas and innovative approaches to the challenge. You can view the Government press release hereRobotics, sensors, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, advanced software, route planning and tracking, image recognition, materials characterisation, control, autonomous systems:  these are just some of the potential technologies which could be used for the Sort and Segregate Nuclear Waste competition.


It is open to any interested organisations – they don’t have to be from a nuclear background – to form consortia and develop a plan to address the challenge. It involves work at Sellafield and several Magnox nuclear reactor sites – the UK’s first generation of nuclear reactor.


This is the second competition to encourage integrated innovation in nuclear decommissioning. The first launched in 2017 to find solutions to help decommission highly radioactive facilities at Sellafield – 15 submissions were identified in phase one as having potential, 5 then went forward to phase two to develop their ideas further and 2 winning consortia were then chosen to turn their ideas into reality.


The competition will be open for applications from August 17. After an assessment process it is likely a number of consortia will be chosen in February 2021 to carry out a 3 month feasibility study into their idea, for which they will each be awarded up to £60,000.  The best submissions will then be given up to £900,000 to go forward to the design and build phase of the project, which can last up to 15 months.


To find out more about the competition and how to apply, go to the Innovate UK website


Further details on the technical specification can be found here


Register for the briefing event on 25th August here and sign up to the networking platform to search for partners.