Culham wins spallation contract

New robotics centre will develop remote handling equipment for European Spallation Source research facility

The robotics centre at the Culham research site is to supply the remote handling equipment for the European Spallation Source being built in Lund, Sweden.

The £1.27 billion European Spallation Source (ESS) will use a linear accelerator to fire protons at a helium cooled tungsten target to create pulses of neutrons. The neutrons are then used by researchers to examine the fine structure of different samples, enabling them to develop and discover new materials.

Spallation is an alternative way of producing neutrons for research purposes to nuclear reactors, such as the at the Institut Laue-Langevin facility in Grenoble, France. The UK has a spallation neutron source, called Isis, at the Rutherford Appleton site, Oxfordshire

The ESS hot cell will handle and process components from the target station. It will consist of equipment such as power manipulators and cranes, processing equipment for remote cutting and welding, shielding and transit cases, all fully remote-controlled via a central control system.

The hot cell will be designed and developed by the Race (Remote Applications in Challenging Environments) centre in Culham. Race was opened last year to research robotics that can be used in in fields such as nuclear operation and decommissioning, deep-sea oil and gas extraction and intelligent mobility.

Race builds on the remote handling capabilities built-up to support the Joint European Tokomak (Jet) fusion research programme at Culham.

Rob Buckingham, the head of Race, said: “Nuclear robotics has been identified as a key component of the UK government’s Robotics and Autonomous Systems strategy. Delivering the ESS hot cell supports this strategy and is good news for Britain’s robotics community.”