1. Challenges for Robotics in Fission
Dr Darren Potter
12th March 2019

2. Opportunities: Opportunities for Robotics in Fission
Challenges for Robotics in Fission
Opportunities:
74% UK decommissioning based at Sellafield
Productivity saving from robotics in other sectors 10-20%
SL challenged with decommissioning cost saving
Improved safety: High reliance on Human intervention
Advances in robotics and autonomous system have not been fully embraced
Waste treatment /conditioning:
Available space to build new stores is limited
Reduce number of waste containers
Lifetime costs for waste containers

3. Fixed highly structured environment
Specific Challenges
Challenges for Robotics in Fission
Manufacturing
Fixed highly structured environment
Fission
RAI operates in ‘Unstructured Environments’ which are constantly evolving and dynamic due to continuously changing decommissioning environment.
People
Teleoperations
Automatic
Autonomous

4. Challenges POCO Broad front decommissioning:
Challenges for Robotics in Fission
POCO
Broad front decommissioning:
Waste treatment & conditioning
Size reduction
Sort & segregation
Robot human interface and interaction
Ponds & Silos
Decommissioning
Care maintenance and inspection for future spent fuel management
Storage
Store filling and emptying
Container repackaging
Care maintenance and inspection
Human Intervention
Remove hands from gloveboxes
Robot assistance
Robotically enhanced operatives

5. Challenges: Sort, segregation and manipulation
Challenges for Robotics in Fission
Larger amount of mixed waste is produced during a decommissioning project efficient sorting and segregation of this material saves, cost, waste storage place and reduces decommissioning timescales.

6. Boundaries The following must be considered:
Challenges for Robotics in Fission
The following must be considered:
Picking and placing material up
Identification of material
Identification of contamination
Removal of contamination
Sorting and stacking materials in a waste
container
Fully autonomous operations (can already be done manually)
24hr / 7 days a week
Show it is more efficient than human processing
Show it is cheaper than present methods

7. Challenge: Zero hands glovebox operations
Challenges for Robotics in Fission
Replace the standard operations in a glovebox, and remove the need for manual intervention tasks.
The approach should consider:
No design changes to existing gloveboxes
Off the shelf equipment
International benchmarking (what is already happening)
Haptic control of humanoid arms in gloveboxes
VR perception and simulation for visual control of
operations

8. Challenge: Operator support (eg suits, wearable technology)
Challenges for Robotics in Fission
The key challenges are as follows:
Safety improvements via the reduction in the number of manual cell entries
There are a high number of planned future manual cell entries and the risk to the operator increases with every cell entry.
Reduce secondary waste generation
The secondary generation of waste (e.g. PVC and air-fed suits, tools) from manual operations is high in proportion to primary waste removed, up to 12 times.
Increased productivity
Productivity is directly dependant on the workface time of an operative on the task, which is typically 2-3hrs (due to getting into/out of PPE, work area temperature and radiation dose) out of 8hrs shift. Planning of decommissioning activities could be improved e.g. through use of virtual reality.
This includes operator enhancement and operator assist.

9. Challenge: Decommissioning - Plant removal in a facility
Challenges for Robotics in Fission
Plan decommissioning tasks to enable fast efficient plant dismantling with no man entry.
Challenge of integration: Individual technologies need to integrated into a system. Need to be simple to change and update.
Challenge
Install, deploy and operate remove kit from a safe out-cell position to take plant apart, after operations remove the kit for reuse.
Characterisation and asset management
Plant to be removed
Pipes
Vessels
Plant supporting structures
Pumps (CV’s)
Gloveboxes

10. Boundaries: Decommissioning - Plant removal in a facility
Challenges for Robotics in Fission
The following must be considered:
Access to the cell
Safe operations
Care and maintenance of the kit
How it is to be operated
Ease of operation
How it is to be recovered
How can it be re-used

11. Continuous Development & Improvement
What more can be done?
Challenges for Robotics in Fission
Continuous Development & Improvement
Cultural challenge for robotic engagement within the nuclear sector
Upskilling of RAI across the whole sector including Tier 2/3, SME’s
Increase cross sectorial Harsh Environment RAI – Currently silo’d
Focus research from structured teleoperations and automation through to development of autonomous RAI in unstructured environments.
Maximise leverage opportunities available from national and international RAS capabilities into research programmes
Continued government support to the wider international market
People
Teleoperations
Automatic
Autonomous
People – upskilling / education
Suppliers - Tier 2/3 innovation uptake
Upskilling for use and development of Robotic Technology
Increased SME engagement

12. Challenges for Robotics in Fission
Ideas?