UKAEA has awarded Veolia Nuclear Solutions (UK) and Wälischmiller Engineering GmbH separate contracts totalling £3 million. They will supply robotic manipulator arms to the RACE research facility.
The £3 million contract stems from the £12 million UK-Japanese robotics deal for fusion energy and nuclear decommissioning research, called ‘LongOps’. LongOps will support faster and safer decommissioning at the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO) Fukushima Dai-ichi site in Japan and at Sellafield in the UK.
Veolia Nuclear Solutions and Wälischmiller Engineering will each provide a twin-arm haptic manipulator. This is a form of kinaesthetic communications technology complete with electrical and control systems. It will deliver key aspects of the LongOps project. UKAEA will also use the manipulators to train operators based at both Sellafield and Fukushima.
In addition, developments from LongOps will enable the upgrading, maintenance and dismantling of fusion devices such as the Joint European Torus (JET). The four-year LongOps collaboration is led by UKAEA’s RACE. It is funded equally by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and TEPCO.