A robotic system will cut, clean, and sort radioactive waste from nuclear sites without workers ever touching the contaminated material. Decommissioning nuclear facilities is slow, dangerous, and expensive because each step—characterising contamination, cutting metal, removing sludge, and storing waste—currently requires separate tools and frequent human intervention. This project integrates sensors, robotic arms, and a novel liquid nitrogen decontamination process into a single system that can handle the entire sequence. The liquid nitrogen method removes contamination without producing secondary waste, which can downgrade the waste’s classification and cut storage costs. If successful, the system could reduce decommissioning timescales, lower operator radiation exposure, and substantially cut the cost of cleaning up legacy nuclear sites. The partners are already working on major projects at Fukushima, Hanford, and European facilities, so the technology is designed for rapid deployment rather than laboratory testing. This is applied engineering, not fundamental science—the aim is to deliver a market-ready tool that makes nuclear clean-up faster, cheaper, and safer.
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Barrnon Integrated Decommissioning System The tasks addressed by the Barrnon Integrated Decommissioning System include characterisation, planning, visualisation, size reduction, chemical & sludge removal, contamination management, decontamination, control and mitigation of airbone contamination, waste handling, waste segregation and storage. All is achieved through the design and development of an integrated system for the decontamination and decommissioning of contaminated materials bringing existing and new technology to the workface enabling a substantial reduction in cost whilst giving an additional reduction in operator risk and a reduction in decommissioning timescales. This will be achieved through the use of new and innovative sensor technology, innovative robotic manipulation equipment combining a wide range of end effectors. A Novel liquid nitrogen decontamination process reduces contamination without producing any secondary waste enabling the user to down grade the waste classification, reducing the cost of waste storage. The package will seamlessly intergrate the advances of VR technology both for characterisation and planning but also for direct operator interface, all in conjunction with existing visulisation machine control. We create a user friendly system which allows characterisation pre, during and post operation reducing the risk, speeding up the process, reducing the cost of operations. Our equipment will offer a step change approach; each of the partners are at the forefront of their given area of expertise. Each partner is working currently on major projects globally and in instances already collaborating to deliver work. This global approach takes learning from the likes of Japan (Fukushima), Hanford (US) as well the European markets to give our product reliable deployment, in turn allowing us to create new markets swiftly for our innovation. The technologies of the main project partners Oxford Technologies Ltd, Createc Ltd and Barrnon will combine to offer a suite of decomissioning tools readily deployable with advanced decomissioning tequniques making the process of decomissionning faster, cheaper safer.
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