Pioneering nuclear waste disposal system unveiled by Isle of Wight firm

Nuclear waste has always been difficult to handle but an Isle of Wight firm is aiming to keep humans further away from the hazardous materials.

Isle of Wight-based Innovative Physics, alongside Cumbria-based Barrnon, has developed robotic and artificial intelligence-led solutions to the tricky problem of sorting out different elements of the waste, particularly during decommissioning of nuclear facilities.

Tackling the issues
The new Innovative Robotic Operating System (IROS) has been developed to tackle three issues in nuclear waste disposal.

These are:

Automation to avoid workers being exposed to harmful radiation.
Identification of different types of waste and an ability to sort accordingly
Using that sorting to reduce health risks, environmental risks and reduce processing costs.

The robotic element of the IROS system allows it to map and identify individual pieces of waste and sort them accordingly, while recording the process on a database.

A chart Showing the different identified types of waste — Showing the different identified types of waste

Key features
Nuclear waste facilities produce many different types of waste including metals, plastics, rubber, soil, rubble and hazardous waste including asbestos and batteries.

Some of the key features in the IROS product include:

AI-led grasping of waste to be processed.
A Safety Monitoring System taken from the aviation sector that ensures materials are correctly identified.
Close-up mapping of the materials to ensure the radiation (alpha or beta) is properly understood and dealt with.

The “future potential of this technology is significant”
A spokesperson for Innovative Physics said,

“The system accurately identifies and sorts different types of debris while also improving efficiency, reducing costs and enhancing safety.
“Notably, the automated system eliminates the need to expose workers to harmful radiation.
“We believe the future potential of this technology is significant as it can be applied to other industries such as waste management, construction and mining.
“IROS has the potential to revolutionise the nuclear decommissioning industry and we will be talking to potential customers about how this can work for them.”