A decommissioned nuclear power plant in Caithness has seen the first use of a radiation detecting snakebot, developed by a team from the Dounreay plant in collaboration with the University of Nottingham, and ICE9 Robotics, who specialise in customising robots for hazardous areas.

The snakebot has been used to squeeze into one of Dounreay’s redundant labs to inspect the area underneath a mechanically-armed turntable inside a nuclear cell.

Fitted with a camera, lights and finger dosemeters to detect radiation, the snakebot has been designed as a simple, inexpensive and potentially disposable robot that could access severely restricted areas that could not be reached by workers.

Dounreay, once the UK’s centre for reactor research and development until its decommissioning in 1994, is now Scotland’s largest nuclear clean-up and demolition project.

According to the Office for Nuclear Regulation, the experimental nature of many of Dounreay’s old facilities means that clean-up and demolition requires innovative approaches as well as great care. 

Jason Simpson, nuclear restoration services project manager for Dounreay, said: “Surveys of the area under the turntable will be very useful to us in planning the decommissioning strategy of the laboratory.”

The technology was developed in response to a challenge by Game Changers, an innovation programme which finds solutions for complex nuclear industry challenges.

It’s not the first time that robots have roved around the old nuclear facility. 

A few years ago, the award-winning ‘Lyra’ robot, designed as a mobile robotic platform, had its debut in Dounreay’s redundant fuel cycle area surveying a radioactive ventilation duct below a disused lab.

Recommended reading

• Hydrogen and Nuclear Energy Get Mass Funding from UK Gov
• UK Gov Commits £3.3m to Next Gen Nuclear Tech
• Future Nuclear Enabling Fund to Boost UK Projects and Competition

Last year, ‘Spot’ the robotic dog developed by Boston Dynamics negotiated pitch-black conditions and several flights of stairs at Dounreay to map out a 4-storey evaporator cell that had been closed off for 25 years, collecting radiological data to use when planning the decommissioning of the facility.

Spot was part of a twelve-month programme of work between Dounreay Site Restoration Limited, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, and Createc Ltd announced in June 2023, which saw seven remote robotic sensing projects undertaken at the site. 

More new tech looks to be on the horizon too, after the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority announced contracts totalling £30 million to drive innovation and research into new techniques to deliver safe, sustainable, and cost-effective decommissioning.