2.2.2
Environmental Restoration
For 65 years, the UK’s nuclear power stations have generated electricity, successfully providing nearly a fifth of our current overall power needs and two-fifths of our clean electricity.
As our ability to generate nuclear energy sustainably has developed, so has our ability to control, manage and remove the hazardous materials of the past in order to restore the environment for future generations.
In doing so, we are delivering a step change in environmental restoration; not just here, but around the world.
Our foundations as a national laboratory lie within this vitally important work, helping to leave the planet stronger and more sustainable for future generations. It has also been the proving ground for critical skills and experience which will enable nuclear science to benefit the UK, and globally, in other ways.
All three of our other Focus Areas build on the specialist capabilities first created in environmental restoration, whether in our understanding of chemical behaviour to support clean energy technology, or in our ability to handle radioisotopes that can unlock life-changing healthcare solutions.
At the same time, we are helping to drive innovations in operations and the supply chain alongside our core customers and sector partners.
Our foundations as a national laboratory lie within this vitally important work, helping to leave the planet stronger and more sustainable for future generations.
We are delivering a step change in environmental restoration; not just here, but around the world.
NNL as a strategic partner: NDA and Sellafield Ltd
We work in partnership with the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), which is accountable for nuclear clean-up in the UK, and its subsidiary, Sellafield Ltd, which is responsible for the Sellafield nuclear site.
NNL has a long and proud history of working with both organisations and a lifetime collaboration agreement with Sellafield Ltd. This includes a Technical Services Agreement (TSA), signed in 2017, which has put our joint working on a long-term footing, enabling us to realise significantly better outcomes and cost savings.
Doing more for less.
Since 2008, our collaboration has saved UK taxpayers over £7 billion with hundreds of millions of pounds in savings identified for the next few years. And, with the freedom to introduce new technologies for the long-term, we have worked with our partners to deliver a series of innovations that are helping to restore the environment better and faster.
A key area for collaboration with both Sellafield Ltd and the NDA is the Replacement Analytical Services Project (RAP). RAP is a £650 million investment in Central Laboratory and will create the biggest analytical nuclear laboratory in the UK, giving NNL a world class capability in nuclear analysis and nuclear forensics.
But there is still much more we can do.
We and the NDA could multiply these benefits several times over if we replicate our partnership agreement with Sellafield Ltd across the remainder of its sites. The cost savings for taxpayers would be transformative, as would the outcomes for restoring the environment.
Since 2008, our collaboration has saved UK taxpayers over £7 billion with hundreds of millions of pounds in savings identified for the next few years. And, with the freedom to introduce new technologies for the long-term, we have worked with our partners to deliver a series of innovations that are helping to restore the environment better and faster.
But there is still much more we can do.
Introducing new technologies, skills and facilities
Examples of innovation achieved through our collaboration agreement with Sellafield Ltd:
- We have pioneered the use of thermal waste treatment, which mixes waste with glass or ceramic materials – rather than the traditional cement – which, once consolidated by heating at high temperatures, reduces the final volume of waste. This is cheaper to look after, more stable and therefore more resistant to proliferation, and safer as a result.
- We have collaborated with Sellafield Ltd to develop robots to remotely handle hazardous materials in radioactive environments. This is already delivering benefits and the project is potentially a game changer in terms of the NDA achieving its goal to have completely removed humans from this work by 2030.
- Our Game Changers programme, delivered in conjunction with innovation experts FIS360, has successfully incentivised over 100 other organisations, ranging from universities to pioneering Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in the supply chain to find ways to overcome some of the most complex challenges in the nuclear industry. One example of a successful project was with Resolve Robotics, a Cumbrian SME. It has received funding to develop its versatile and modular robotic deployment system CellRail, which will make it safer, easier and cheaper to carry out inspection and intervention processes in nuclear cells.
“Our relationship with Game Changers and ability to work with NNL has had a significant impact on our business, lending us credibility within the UK nuclear sector and the confidence to expand our market reach.
By helping us advance CellRail, our novel remote deployment technology, we hope to remove barriers to decommissioning activities and minimise the overall cost and environmental impact. Since being involved in Game Changers, we have been able to increase our workforce from one to nine and provide highly specialist jobs here in the North West.”
Andrew Ludar-Smith Technical Director of Resolve Robotics
International collaboration to solve a global challenge
Environmental restoration is a global challenge shared with the UK’s allies throughout the world.
NNL will continue to work with the global nuclear community, sharing best practice and expertise.
We are proud of our role in commercialising UK expertise and assets in order to support environmental challenges overseas but it is a win-win situation. Successful environmental restoration benefits the entire planet.
No one has the monopoly on good ideas. We all want the same outcome.
Vital restoration work in Japan
Since the great east-Japan earthquake and tsunami in 2011 caused significant damage to the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, NNL has provided ongoing support with clean-up operations, reflecting our position as a global expert in this area.
With experience built up over decades at Sellafield, we have been able to redeploy our skills and understanding to support our Japanese counterparts in their restoration work. This includes establishing a successful partnership with the Japan Atomic Energy Agency.
As a result, NNL sits at the centre of the UK’s coordinated approach to nuclear collaboration with Japanese partners and customers. We have worked closely with UK organisations, large and small, to enable successful technology transfer to Japan and we will continue to explore other opportunities for future collaboration – for example, by combining our countries’ experience in operating high temperature reactors.
“NNL has grown its reputation in Japan by providing support and sharing relevant UK experience to the challenging decommissioning and clean-up operation at Fukushima. What has been impressive has been the way NNL has also been able to bring in other UK firms to support the clean-up effort. This has been achieved in partnership with other UK government organisations, closely supporting the work of the NDA and its subsidiary, International Nuclear Services Japan, and has demonstrated the value of government bodies and institutions working together for UK prosperity.”
Chris Heffer Regional Director North-East Asia, Department for International Trade, British Embassy Tokyo
Recycling used materials to develop a brand new capability for the European Space Agency
NNL led a pioneering team, working with the University of Leicester, which discovered that a rare element formed as used nuclear fuel decays was a viable alternative to the existing Radioisotope Power Systems (RPSs) used in space travel.
The breakthrough followed a call from the European Space Agency (ESA) to develop an alternative RPS to plutonium – specifically Plutonium-238, all of which is owned by the United States of America and Russia. This was to give the ESA the independence to control its own space missions and make space exploration more affordable by removing reliance on imported plutonium.
Nuclear fuel, through RPSs, remains the only way to power long-term, long distance missions. The new alternative developed as a result of the collaboration, Americium-241, is formed by recycling nuclear wastes. It has a half-life of around 430 years, compared to around 90 years for Plutonium-238, which means it is a lasting source of energy for longer space missions.
With NNL’s innovation providing the confidence the ESA needed, a lunar mission is planned to launch towards the end of the 2020s and the next generation of European moon landings are expected within the decade.
“The unrivalled energy density of nuclear power sources enables a whole range of missions that would be otherwise impossible. This successful collaboration between the nuclear and space sectors has created a brand new capability for Europe, and opens the doors to a future of ambitious and exciting exploration of our solar system.”
Keith Stephenson European Space Agency lead
“I am proud to be contributing to improvements in nuclear security and environmental restoration.”
Dr Stephanie Thornber Senior Research Technologist
In 2020, Dr Stephanie Thornber, Senior Research Technologist at NNL, was winner of the European Nuclear Society’s prestigious High Scientific Council PhD award. Here, she describes her work at NNL:
“I joined NNL in 2018 after completing my PhD. I’ve been lucky enough to progress into a role that enables me to continue my PhD research, as one of a team of scientists and engineers working with the NDA to determine a long-term plan for improving how we safeguard the UK’s plutonium inventory.
Our team is leading the UK’s development of a heat-plus-pressure technology, known as Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP), for processing plutonium oxide material into a ceramic form for long-term storage and disposal. Ceramic materials are superior hosts for plutonium, compared to glass and cement, both in terms of proliferation resistance and life-cycle costs as they lead to reduced volumes of packages requiring storage and disposal.
NNL has been researching ceramic wasteforms for more than 20 years, and are now leading the UK’s development of an active HIP facility that will increase the technology readiness level of this disposition option for treating the UK’s plutonium oxide inventory. Through the years we’ve collaborated with businesses including SMEs across our supply chain, as well as universities and other national laboratories.
I am proud to be contributing to improvements in nuclear security and environmental restoration, in a stream of work that is tackling one of the most pressing challenges of the UK’s nuclear sector, as well as inspiring the next generation of nuclear materials scientists in the North West.”