WIREDGOV

A webinar sharing session has provided valuable feedback to researchers, businesses and sites involved in a series of innovative projects focused on nuclear decommissioning and waste.

Presenter at KTN webinar

Innovate UK, NDA and DECC are funding the collaborative R&D and feasibility studies, which are aimed at encouraging innovation in the civil nuclear fission power sector and developing a robust, innovative UK supply chain.

The research projects are being undertaken across the UK. They involve partnerships between supply chain businesses and nuclear sites.

In 2014, a competition by Innovate UK (with NDA and DECC) awarded funding support to help UK businesses benefit from the growing opportunities in all sectors of the nuclear industry, including power generation and decommissioning.  The competition’s priorities were to foster:

• technology transfer
• sharing from other sectors and companies, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)

Last month, Innovate UK’s  Knowledge Transfer Network streamed decommissioning and waste management presentations from participating organisations. The audience included representatives from the Nuclear Waste and Decommissioning Research Forum (NWDRF). The presentations comprised 5-minute project overviews, followed by a question and answer session. The live webcast meant that people could watch remotely and ask questions online. This provided feedback from technology end-users to the researchers as the projects progress.  It was a good example of a knowledge-sharing event.

Watch and listen to recorded research webinar by KTN

Presentation themes included:

• TRIBECA (TRItium detection By ElectroChemically Assisted radiometrics)
• Submersible treatment of pond waters
• Large-scale hot-isostatic pressing of waste forms for the treatment of Magnox sludge and other wastes
• DEnsification processing of a Ceramic MAtrix composite material for nuclear waste containment (DECMAN)
• High dynamic range spectroscopic radiation detectors
• SeeSnake
• In-Situ monitoring of tritium and carbon 14 in groundwater
• New techniques for the rapid characterisation of low-level waste and surface contamination
• Improving the decommissioning process with intelligent semantic building histories
• Novel system for localised, real-time radiometric measurements of ground water at civil nuclear sites
• SmartScan
• D:EEP : Estimating Entrained Products
• Pre-industrial research of horizontal sludge dredge
• Thermal treatment of irradiated graphite
• Flexible charged particle detector for nuclear decommissioning
• ELENDES II (Electrochemical Enhancement of Nuclear Decontamination Solutions)
• Plasma vitrification