Five UK companies have progressed through to the next phase of a £5.5m radioactive waste segregation competition.

Five UK companies have progressed through to the next phase of a £5.5m radioactive waste segregation competition.

The ‘Sort & Seg’ innovation competition, launched in July 2020, set the challenge of finding ways to sort and segregate mixed radioactive waste at some of the UK’s oldest nuclear sites.

The first phase of the competition, run in partnership with the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), Magnox Ltd, Sellafield Ltd and Innovate UK, asked companies to submit proposals on how they would bring together innovative techniques and technology to tackle this ‘rad-waste’ challenge.

Five companies and their diverse consortia have now been awarded contracts, each worth up to £900k, to build demonstrators for their ideas.

The companies are: Cavendish Nuclear; Barrnon; Createc; Atkins; and Veolia Nuclear Solutions (UK).