Had an excellent day yesterday in Bristol at this conference and listened to some very interesting presentations. It was sponsored by the South West Nuclear Hub, EDF Energy and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.

It was showcasing the latest R&D being carried out to support nuclear decommissioning.

Tom Scott opened the day with a great talk about robots and the work Bristol Uni was doing at Fukushima. This was followed by John Clifford from Sellafield Limited who explained the UK's decommissioning activities. The remainder of the day showcased the work being done by UK Universities & industry partners. It covered a wide range of topics: robots for characterisation, muon tomography, understanding the corrosion of ILW containers, hydrogen management, alpha detection and Viridiscope for measuring concrete contamination to name a few.

What was great was that although the talks were of a highly technical nature they were understandable to non-experts and demonstrated where the science would hopefully lead to real-world practical applications. An impressive event and well organised.

It was well worth attending since as well as being valuable for networking and meeting colleagues old and new, I managed to update our catalog with the latest information and even added a couple of new entries that we didn't already have - a sensor that changes colour in the presence of hydrogen and using a flame detector to measure alpha at distance. #ideacatalog