Nuclear Decommissioning – Plans and Innovations

Robotics and AI Programme Manager Chris Ballard is passionate about technology, from innovation to adoption and everything in the middle.

His current role allows him to harness that fascination to focus on robotics and artificial intelligence, which provide Sellafield with the means to remove people from extreme environments and assist in its mission to decommission and clean-up the site in a safer, faster and cheaper way.

Chris graduated from the University of Salford with a BSc in Computer Science and then advanced his academic career by achieving his Post-Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) while lecturing at the university. His professional career began at Capula in Westlakes and was followed by a move to Sellafield as a Control Systems engineer in THORP in 2006.

Capitalising on his background in teaching, Chris led a new initiative to improve and update the training at Sellafield through the use of eLearning and smarter, more effective tools, before taking on the role of IRT lead for Robotics, within the Technical team, in 2019.

Under Chris’s lead, the use of robotics at Sellafield has grown rapidly, by establishing links across the business and promoting the potential of this pioneering technology to change the way that people work. As a result, robotics is now seen as a key enabler to achieve Sellafield’s mission by providing the interface between people and the extreme environments.

Chris manages the RAI programme, which is centred on developing an Enterprise-wide long-term roadmap for innovation and providing oversight to numerous cross-cutting projects. He is keen to share his expertise and raise awareness of the wholesale potential of robotics, particularly amongst young people and is engaging with academics to establish and progress an apprenticeship programme in this area.

An experienced nuclear consultant with 36 years’ working in waste management and decommissioning. This experience is derived from undertaking a range of different roles over this period for government and commercial clients in both the UK and internationally. This career has included the operational management of solid radwaste facilities through to the planning, delivery and scrutiny of decommissioning projects and the management of generated wastes to meet objectives whilst conforming with regulatory acceptance criteria. In recent years, activities have included the identification and development of technologies and approaches to improve the predictability and effectiveness of decommissioning and waste management projects. Doug has been an active contributor to the WNA Decommissioning and Waste Management Working Group since 2016.

Capability Development Manager within the Remediation Value Stream at Sellafield Ltd. Chris’s team also leads the Land-based Robotics domain for Sellafield Ltd.

Chris has worked at Sellafield for 20 years with roles in environmental management, waste management, characterisation and latterly technology and capability development. Chris is responsible for a developing, demonstrating and implementing new capabilities to enable safer, faster, better value Remediation of the Sellafield site for the future. The portfolio of development work is wide ranging but a significant proportion is in the field of Robotics. Chris has led a number of ‘first for nuclear’ demonstrations of technology and has been instrumental in steering numerous innovation competitions and projects within the supply chain.

Mats Ahlström, Programme Manager Ringhals 1&2 Decommissioning (R12D), BA Generation / BU Nuclear Decommissioning

Mats started his career as management consultant within the utilities industry. Began to work for Vattenfall in 2005 and gained experience from many different parts of the value chain such as Customer Care & Sales, Energy Trading, and Wind Power before joining the Nuclear Decommissioning business in 2018. He holds MSc in Mechanical Engineering (Nuclear Power Technology) from Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, and BSc in Economics, University of Stockholm.

Matti Kaisanlahti has 12 years' experience of different working tasks related to decommissioning and waste management. He has been a leading specialist in decommissioning for Fortum Nuclear Services since 2019. Mr. Kaisanlahti related tasks have included decommissioning planning for Loviisa NPP, Olkiluoto NPP and VTT research reactor. He is responsible for the nuclear decommissioning research and development, which includes coordination of the decommissioning projects and participating in planning as a leading specialist. His knowledge of decommissioning related issues includes project management, cost estimates, dismantling planning and time scheduling.

Akira Ono, Managing Executive Officer, President of Fukushima Daiichi Decontamination and Decommissioning Engineering Company (FDEC), Chief Decommissioning Officer (CDO), Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Inc.

Mr Akira Ono graduated with a degree in engineering from the University of Tokyo. He joined Tokyo Electric Power Company in 1983. After serving as group manager of the Reactor Maintenance Group in the Maintenance Department of TEPCO’s Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Plants, Ono served as general manager of the Units 5 and 6 Operations Department at the Fukushima Daiichi NPPs. He later served as head of TEPCO’s Tsurumi Service Center, Kanagawa Branch Office, among other positions. In June 2013, Ono became site director of Fukushima Daiichi. In July 2016 he was appointed managing director at the Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corporation (NDF). Ono assumed his current position as president of Fukushima Daiichi Decontamination and Decommissioning Engineering Company (FDEC) and Chief Decommissioning Officer (CDO) in April 2018.

Keith has worked at Sellafield for 43 years at Sellafield holding numerous roles in Maintenance, Engineering and Operations. He is currently responsible for managing Legacy Ponds ROV operations in line with the requirement of the Legacy Ponds Tactical and associated Operations Plans.

Keith has line manager accountability for the Legacy Ponds Inventory Data Team (IDT) who are custodians for the nuclear inventory and manage all moves within the ponds.

Peter Allport leads a team of subject matter expert engineers who provide engineering and maintenance advice and task delivery to a range of remote handling and remote inspection assets. These include four main areas, ROVs (Both land based and submersible), UAVs, MSMs and Robotic Manipulators.

Peter also heads the Air Domain of the new Robotics and AI strategy and working group, setting the direction of travel and growth for all air based robotic platforms and associated workflow.

Alan Bevan has over forty years’ experience working in highly regulated industries: nuclear, offshore, marine and aerospace. The majority of Alan’s experience having been accumulated within the government business sector. From the outset, Alan’s career has had both domestic and international aspects. He has worked for extended periods in UK, US, Europe, Asia and Australasia. Alan has risen to these challenges and has achieved notable business “firsts” in each of these markets. A Charted Mechanical Engineer, for the last fifteen years Alan has specialised in safety-critical handling and control systems for land, sea and sub-sea applications. Joining Ansaldo in 2020, Alan has re-established the Defence Key Account. He is responsible for all aspects of Ansaldo’s work with UK defence primes (AWE, Babcock, Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems) as well as business with third parties working on behalf these primes (Morgan Sindall, Costain, etc).

Outside work Alan has a keen interest in travel, DIY and gardening. Alan is married to Rohaya, they have three adult children and, so far, two grandchildren.

Dr Charles Mendes has been involved in the nuclear industry for 27 years. Starting in the field of Nuclear Power Plant materials supporting the safety cases and operations of the UK Magnox plants through the delivery of technical projects and reaching the Group Head position before moving on to heading the Engineering and Fuel Route groups in Magnox. Charles then took a Delivery Manager role in a new consultancy branch of Serco supporting Nuclear Power Generation where he helped secure framework positions with the EDF Technical Support Alliance and the Magnox Consultancy Support contract and became the Serco account manager for these whilst leading the Engineering team and doubling its size. He then moved to an operations manager role in AMEC leading a team of M&E consultants supporting the UK nuclear operators and helped the growth of a new unit in France. For the last four years, Charles has been the Energy Key Account Manager in Ansaldo Nuclear looking after the New Build, Operational and Big Science customers.

Kristina Gillin’s career in the nuclear industry began at the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Co (SKB), where she worked throughout the 1990s – both in encapsulation of spent nuclear fuel and siting of a deep geological repository in Sweden. During the decade that followed, she worked in communications, marketing and sustainable development in non-nuclear fields.
In 2010 she returned to nuclear as a consultant at Kinectrics in Toronto, Canada, where she managed and worked on a wide range of projects related to nuclear decommissioning, waste management, safety assessment and licensing.
Currently she is a Principal Consultant at Vysus Group (formerly LR Energy), focusing on business development and delivery of projects in nuclear decommissioning and waste management. She is also Chair of the technical committee on radioactive waste management at the Canadian Standards Association.
She has a M.Sc. in mechanical engineering and a transdisciplinary master in sustainable development.

Peter Berben got his Master in Science degree in nuclear energy and electronics in 1990 and graduated from the Vlerick' International Management School in Brussels in 2011.
He has over 30 years of experience in national and international nuclear engineering and business development and today holds a management position at ENGIE Corporate, Nuclear Segment as Head of Radioactive Waste and Decommissioning.
Peter Berben is also a member of several advisory boards, incl:
1/ EQUANS Specialised Nuclear Services, a service-oriented company belonging to ENGIE, active in the field of decontamination and dismantling of nuclear installations in Belgium and abroad;
2/ ‘MAGICS Instruments’, a company specialising in the design of radiation-hardened integrated circuits, located in Geel, Belgium;
3/ ‘AiNT', Aachen Institute for Nuclear Training, located in Germany.
Peter Berben is also a member of the NEA expert group for robotics and remote systems in nuclear back-end.
From 2016 into 2018, he was Managing Director of a German ENGIE affiliate for providing remote handling services and solutions for nuclear dismantling.

Rav Chunilal is Sellafield Ltd.’s head of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (RAI) responsible for leveraging RAI capability across the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) group to accelerate the delivery of opportunities presented by the nuclear decommissioning challenges.

Rav has represented the NDA group at international events on topics associated with innovation, technology and engineering, and has championed novel process engineering solutions. His previous roles at Sellafield Ltd involved providing input to national and international governments and agencies on environmental topics, allowing future strategic options to be developed and remain open. Rav also holds roles with other organisations to drive strategic and innovation improvements.

Helen is the Business Manager for Land Remediation and Characterisation Services and has worked for Nuvia since 2007. Helen manages a growing team experienced in assay technologies, sampling campaigns for fingerprint determination/application, land quality surveys and dose assessments, Environmental Permits and preparation of Waste Acceptance Criteria and radioactive transport calculations. Helen was responsible for the development of the High Resolution Assay Monitor (HIRAM), a self-contained mobile unit enabling rapid deployment of a gamma spectrometry system, and the Gamma Excavation Monitor (GEM) used for the bulk assay of excavation buckets of material. Helen provides consultancy support, in the form of desktop studies, Environmental permits, development of characterisation strategies and data processing to support delicensing and decommissioning initiatives. She is also the Company Dangerous Goods Safety Advisor (DGSA) specialising in the transport of radioactive material.

Helen has published a number of scientific papers on her PhD research into industries associated with the generation of waste enhanced with naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM). Helen regularly submits papers and presents at international conferences, and has successfully supervised a PhD student at Reading University (part-funded by Nuvia) and an MSc dissertation at Birmingham University; she is currently supervising another PhD student, at Reading University, who is researching the application of portable gamma spectrometry techniques in archaeology. She has supported IAEA initiatives, including participation in the International Network of Laboratories for Nuclear Waste Characterisation (LABONET) and the Technical Cooperation programme, which provides characterisation advice to developing countries. Helen is secretary of the Cross Industry Assay Working Group, which comprises members from across the nuclear sector who are responsible for characterisation.