A research team from the University of Bristol was selected as one of the five best entries of the International Atomic Energy Agency Crowdsourcing Challenge that sought original concepts for advancing the decommissioning of nuclear facilities or environmental remediation of radiologically contaminated sites.
The team's submission was entitled characterization toolkit to enable accelerated decommissioning activities and was based on their work conducted at former Soviet processing facilities in Ukraine.
“Nuclear energy is a very important part of ensuring that future energy grids are low carbon, reliable and sustainable. Nuclear robotics is a fast growing discipline and physical demonstrations of advanced robotic systems help make nuclear decommissioning quicker and safer for human operators,” said Erin Holland, a PhD student from the University of Bristol.
“We hope our work will help to improve public knowledge of and interest in nuclear energy, using advanced technologies. It is very important for cementing nuclear energy as a keystone energy technology for decades to come.”
A total of 26 submissions from 12 countries were received and evaluated against criteria such as level of innovations and creativity. The winning teams were initially invited to present their entries at the IAEA General Conference in September. In view of the current Covid‑19 travel restrictions, this was unfortunately not possible.