Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in confined spaces

There are hundreds of nuclear and non-nuclear facilities which need to be cleaned up on the Sellafield site. Manual decommissioning of Sellafield’s facilities is hazardous for operators and extremely time consuming. Opportunities to undertake decommissioning activities faster, more safely and at a reduced cost are constantly being explored.

Sellafield would like to make use of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) that can access hazardous facilities whilst carrying a range of sensors and other analytical tools, to facilitate safer and cheaper decommissioning. The aim of this challenge is to develop a UAV modular toolkit that can be easily tailored for deployment in a wide variety of decommissioning scenarios.

Challenge Aims

As decommissioning activity on the Sellafield site accelerates, the aspiration is to develop a UAV deployment toolkit that could be tailored to meet the needs of specific challenges as and when they arise. Sellafield are seeking a UAV platform that is capable of:

• Carrying visualisation equipment
• Deployment through vertical or horizontal inspection ports without the requirement for significant reconfiguration. Ports are typically 140mm in diameter, through concrete up to 1.5m thick
• Providing the operator with its position in real time
• Operating in an entirely consistent and predicable manner in order to build stakeholder confidence

Find out more

Please download the challenge statement for full details of this opportunity.

You can also watch a webinar and Q & A session with the challenge owner for more information and details of how to apply.

The closing date for applications is Friday 18th November at 12 noon.