Deployment of a Muon Tomography System for Nuclear Waste Characterisation

Muon Tomography is a new technology that is just now making the transition from academic research into commercialisation. Over the past decade, Muon Tomography has been one of the fastest-growing fields in applied particle and nuclear physics research with applications in diverse areas such as national security, volcanology and cultural preservation. This imaging technique uses naturally-occurring background radiation in the form of cosmic-ray muons, particles that are constantly showering the Earth's surface. It builds up a 3D image of shielded and/or large, dense structures that other, more conventional forms of imaging radiation (e.g. X-rays, gamma rays etc.) are not able to penetrate. Researchers at the University of Glasgow and UK National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) have developed a novel Muon Tomography 3D imaging system to address an important and complex challenge in today's society. The challenge for the UK Nuclear Industry is to process and safely store current as well as legacy nuclear waste, some of which dates back several decades. In particular, the cost and safety of the long term storage of the UK Intermediate Level Waste (ILW) inventory is of crucial importance. One form of ILW are so-called '500 litre' drums that contain cladding material stripped from nuclear fuel rods that are encapsulated within grout-filled steel containers. There are currently more than 30,000 such barrels in long-term storage on the Sellafield site alone. Whether these contain fragments of uranium fuel is a key factor in deciding how these containers are stored. If there is an uncertainty about the content of a legacy container then it must be treated conservatively (i.e. to assume the worst case in terms of possible content). This would require storage space that would incur additional cost of the order of £100M-£200M for the UK Taxpayer in order to build such facilities. The 3D imaging system that has been developed is capable of identifying the presence (or alternatively confirming the absence) of fuel within these containers, thereby allowing the barrels to be more efficiently and cost-effectively stored and processed or by establishing the presence of fuel that can be retrieved and/or repackaged more safely at a much reduced cost. This could not otherwise be done without opening up each container to manually inspect the contents, which would be prohibitively expensive (of the order of £300M). The proposed project will be led by Lynkeos Technology Ltd., a Glasgow-based company founded in August 2016. It has been spun-out by the University of Glasgow after a successful multi-million-pound R&D programme funded by Sellafield Ltd. (on behalf on the Nuclear Decommsioning Authority) and in collaboration with NNL. Innovate UK funding from this competition would enable the first-of-a-kind deployment of this innovative solution within the UK Nuclear Industry. This contract will facilitate the commercialisation of this unique technology and advance the current TRL6 (lab-based demonstrator) system to TRL9 (active deployment) on a nuclear-licensed site in the UK (NNL Preston site). This system will then be ideally placed to characterise the contents of these ILW containers and to help mitigate the risks inherent with the long-term storage of such materials, and in the process will provide a significant saving to the UK Taxpayer.