Project description
Towards safer and management of nuclear waste
Hazardous waste needs to be managed safely, without endangering human health and harming the environment. Currently, it takes 10 years and millions of euros to sort a 500 m3 silo of legacy nuclear waste, with high risk of error, radiation exposure, and contamination of the environment. The EU-funded RED LINE project will scale up a waste sorting robotic system to clean up more than half of the past century’s nuclear waste production and reduce the amount of future hazardous waste generated by this industry and other civil applications. The process will make sorting hazardous waste faster, safer and more cost-efficient.
Objective
4,7 million m3 of solid nuclear waste are piling up in silos worldwide, awaiting final disposal. By 2050, they will be 11,4 million m3. Regulation is pushing for their reconditioning. However, only a few waste recovery programs are running today, where each piece of waste is sorted by human teleoperators. It takes 10 years and millions of euro to sort a 500m3 silo, with risks of error every ten pieces, radiation exposure, and contamination of the environment. This is poorly effective.
These heterogeneous wastes are so instable that automated sorting is deemed impossible.
With this project, SILÉANE will scale up its autonomous waste sorting robotic system, currently applied to civil waste-producing industries, to clean up more than half of the past century’s nuclear waste production and reduce the number of future hazardous wastes generated by this industry and other civil applications.
The project will deliver a full-scale demonstrator of an integrated robotic system that will sort and segregate these wastes automatically and error-free into optimised containers. They will be extracted one by one before crossing a scanning “red line” emitted by the system. Their nature will be accurately characterized (radioactivity emission, chemical composition) with all data recorded in inventories.
This process is 2,5 times faster than teleoperation, costs 3 times less and is safe, leaving less waste behind. 80% of the waste will go for reconditioning and recycling (versus 30% today). During feasibility phase, it showed a 99,5% accuracy rate on 540 tons of waste.
SILEANE will grab the lead in the global nuclear waste sorting market (30% market share by 2030) and improve its market shares in the civil waste market, where the trend for automation is booming as well. Finally, SILÉANE will scale-up its organizational structure to address an increasing number of heterogeneous waste-producing industries worldwide. This project will raise the bar for SILÉANE at the corporate level.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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H2020-EU.2.3. - INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs
MAIN PROGRAMME
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H2020-EU.3. - PRIORITY 'Societal challenges
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H2020-EU.2.1. - INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) H2020-EIC-SMEInst-2018-2020
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
42000 Saint Etienne
France
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.