UK’s long-term underground nuclear waste facility could be ‘unmanned’

The possibility of constructing an unmanned and automated nuclear waste disposal facility is being explored by Nuclear Waste Services (NWS).

Speaking at the Nuclear Industry Association’s (NIA’s) annual conference on 4 December, NWS chief technical officer John Corderoy discussed the technological innovations the organisation was looking into for the future of disposing nuclear waste. This would be within the much-discussed geological disposal facility (GDF).

Although initially doubtful to the idea of having an automated, robotic facility capable of disposing nuclear waste, Corderoy admitted he is more open to the idea of late.

“I was sceptical five years ago about the idea of an unmanned geological facility,” he said.

“Something that’s fully automated and run by robots on the ground. My view has changed in the last five years, advances in the technology have been so fast, couple that with intelligent robots and artificial intelligence (AI) then we could conceive of a very different facility.”

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