in Aerospace / Security

Award winning nuclear drone team are flying high

Posted 23 October 2023

Sellafield Ltd's UAV team is celebrating after winning a Nuclear Manufacturing Award and being shortlisted for two Engineering and Manufacturing Awards.



Above: (left to right) Samuel Jay, Luke Henley, Amanda Smith, Niall Paterson and Adrian Johnson, Sellafield Ltd.
Courtesy Sellafield Ltd


The team that manages Sellafield’s fleet of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has been recognised for their work this week after winning an award for innovation at the first ever Nuclear Manufacturing Awards.

Their winning entry demonstrated how the team has worked with partners to introduce UAVs to carry our monitoring and remote inspections on equipment and buildings at Sellafield and other nuclear sites in the UK.

Above: An unmanned aerial vehicle being flown on the Sellafield site.
Courtesy Sellafield Ltd

UAVs remove the need for humans to enter hazardous environments, confined spaces, or to work at dangerous heights; improving safety and delivering results more quickly than was previously possible.

They also provide high quality inspection data, allowing engineers to gather information and make informed decisions more effectively.

This means significant costs savings for the taxpayer. In 2022/23 alone the UAV programme helped avoid costs of over £4 million when compared to traditional inspection methods.

New for 2023, the Nuclear Manufacturing Awards are part of the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre’s annual summit that brings together hundreds of manufacturers from across the country with the leaders of the UK’s major nuclear programmes.

The team was also shortlisted for two Engineering and Manufacturing Awards in the innovation and health, safety and wellbeing categories recently, receiving a ‘highly commended’ for their submission to the latter.

Amanda Smith, Sellafield Ltd’s UAV equipment programme lead, said: "We’re honoured to have won the Nuclear Manufacturing Award for innovation and the recognition this brings for the team.

"UAVs have now become the standard method for remote inspections at Sellafield, showing the lasting impact of these innovative approaches on the culture of our organisation.

"I’m proud to demonstrate how we’re helping to make a clean and safe environment for future generations in a safer, faster and cheaper way than was ever thought possible before."

Sara Huntingdon, head of innovation at the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), said: "This is a fantastic example highlighting how the nuclear sector is embracing innovation to improve safety and accelerate decommissioning.

"Testing and trialling new approaches,  and deploying new technologies which help us deliver our decommissioning mission safely and more effectively is something we actively want to celebrate and encourage – it’s is a core part of our innovation strategy.

"The work undertaken at Sellafield by the UAV team, and across the wider NDA Group on remote sensing approaches, recognises the good work of the teams involved and that real progress is being made against our innovation aims – to monitor our buildings remotely by 2025 and to capture data at source by 2030 – as set out in our 'Grand Challenges for Technical Innovation'."

 

 

 

Other Stories
Advertisement
Latest News

Babcock increases support on UK’s Dreadnought programme

Babcock has been awarded two further contracts for work on the UK’s new Dreadnought Class submarine worth a combined £121 million.

Farnborough Airport named FBO of the Year

Farnborough Airport announces that it has won the prestigious title of FBO of the Year at the Air Charter Association (ACA) Excellence Awards 2023.

Hadean and Faculty AI join forces to create next-generation AI capabilities

Spatial computing company, Hadean, and AI solutions provider, Faculty AI, have agreed to team up and accelerate the advancement of AI integrations for defence, security, and national or international governance.

UK Government launches AMP

Plans to build on British excellence in advanced manufacturing to secure long-term private investment and create high-paid jobs have been unveiled in the Advanced Manufacturing Plan (AMP), by UK Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch,

UKSA awards grant to Airbus to develop Space Catalyst in Stevenage

Airbus Defence and Space in the UK has been awarded £3.9 million from the UK Space Agency (UKSA) to create a space and connectivity catalyst at its headquarters in Stevenage.

Griffiths Farrans JV awarded Bristol Airport transport hub contract

Griffiths Farrans JV has been awarded a contract to deliver a transformational public transport hub as part of Bristol Airport’s largest capital project ever.

ODU SK0106300622
See us at
Space Comm Expo BTDVD BT