WACPAC -- efficient packing of decommissioning waste which meets the waste acceptance criteria for disposal WACPAC is an autonomous system for assigning items from decommissioning operations to the correct waste stream. Particular emphasis is placed on accurate separations at the waste category boundaries and for identifying decontaminable items to minimise disposal costs. The system also supports packing items into containers efficiently and generation of detailed manifests of the package contents. The WACPAC project fuses the nuclear materials assay capability of ANTECH, the machine vision and robotics expertise of ARM Robotics and the University of Birmingham's Extreme Robotics Laboratory (ERL), the advanced X-ray capabilities of Metrix NDT, the stand-off materials identification capability of CAP Fraunhofer and the nuclear knowledge and righall capabilities of the National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) to sort and segregate random items into the appropriate waste category.

The project is based on several interconnected and innovative processes including ‘in cell’ survey measurements to establish the geometry of the cell and the distribution of activity, dismantling the cell in a planned manner, removing the components to an adjacent Waste Segregation Area (WSA) for processing and finally assaying, characterising and segregating the waste components and placing them in appropriate waste containers. The process is implemented, in keeping with the ALARP principle, through the extensive use of a flexible “toolbox” of proven robotic technology, which is applicable to a wide variety of different decommissioning situations and scenarios. The principle objectives are to reduce or eliminate both man entry into the cell and the manual handling of radioactive waste items while processing the waste. The waste is processed only once and characterised approved waste packages are produced as the process output.

awaiting Public Project Summary