Appleby firm Barrnon Ltd among winners of nuclear clean-up competition

An Appleby firm is among 14 businesses awarded contracts to come up with innovative approaches to remotely sort and segregate radioactive waste.

Barrnon Limited is among the winners of the Sort and Seg competition, worth £3.9 million in total.

Launched in July 2020 by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, in partnership with Magnox Ltd, Sellafield Ltd and Innovate UK, it set the challenge of coming up with proposals for using autonomous technology to sort and segregate mixed radioactive wastes at the UK’s oldest
nuclear sites.

The first phase of the competition is now complete and contracts, worth up to £60,000 each, have been awarded to 14 consortia that will now come up with feasibility studies for their proposals, including robotics, advanced sensors and artificial intelligence.

The NDA’s head of innovation, Sara Huntingdon, said: “The reaction to Sort and Seg has been incredible – we have received the best response we’ve ever had for this kind competition.

“It’s really exciting that most of the successful organisations are bringing in experience and ideas from other sectors and I’m really looking forward to working together with our partners and with all the winners to see how these ideas develop.”

The initial feasibility studies will be delivered in May, with the winners competing for a number of contracts – each worth up to £900,000 – for 15-month ‘demonstrator projects’.

The contracts to develop feasibility studies have been awarded to: