Radiochemistry Sensors for use on Robotic Inspection Vehicles

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Robotic systems are becoming more widely used in the inspection and characterisation of radioactive facilities such as disaster sites (Fukushima) and nuclear storage facilities (Sellafield). Whilst there is significant ongoing research in the field of remote inspection vehicles for nuclear environments in terms of the mechatronics and autonomy, there are very few sensors which can be deployed on them to provide detailed information beyond the geometric layout (vision andLIDAR) or general radiation levels (gamma and neutron detectors). This project will investigate the use of a range of radiochemical sensing technologies which could be deployed onto remote inspection vehicles such as chemo-paper-sensors. The primary challenge will be to analyse the results on the vehicles themselves so that samples do not need to be retrieved and analysed in a lab, essentially creating a mobile lab. This is due to the fact that most inspection vehicles cannot be retrieved once they have been deployed.Research areas will include the development of novel small-scale radiochemical detection methods which can be mounted on a robot and sampling methodologies for the mobile lab.