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Comment: How robotics will power the UK’s fusion energy future

10 May 2024

This comment from RAICo’s director, Dr. Kirsty Hewitson, was originally published in The Engineer.

Designing machines for remote operations and maintenance early will make the UK a leading force in clean energy, says Dr Kirsty Hewitson, director, RAICo (Robotics & AI Collaboration).

The government’s Modern Industrial Strategy, released last month, was accompanied by a series of industrial sector plans. One in particular, the Clean Energy Industries Sector Plan, will have caught the attention of the UK robotics community.

It outlines the UK’s ambition to become a global clean energy superpower, focusing investment and capacity-building on six green technologies. Among them, one stands out for both its promise and its complexity: fusion energy. For now, much of the focus of fusion is on proving concepts and designing power plants. But once we get there – and some estimates suggest that could be as little as a decade away – robotics will play a key role in their operations and maintenance.

While fusion power plants will be designed and constructed by people, their long-term operation and maintenance will rely significantly on machines. Environments of extreme heat, radiation, magnetism, and complexity, where human access is usually inadvisable and often impossible will be standard. Tasks such as upgrading components, replacing degraded parts, and inspecting delicate instruments all demand extraordinary precision, but must also be safe, efficient, and repeatable. This is why robotics will do more than support fusion engineering: it will be central to fusion energy’s commercial success.

The good news is that this is not unfamiliar territory for the UK. In fact, we are a driving force.

The UK is already a recognised leader in robotics with world-class research institutions, innovative small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and strong industrial partnerships driving advances across multiple sectors. There is a remarkable amount of academic research going into this field in the UK (The Universities of Manchester and Oxford are particularly significant hubs of knowledge and discoveries) and many exciting companies within the country’s supply chains have ideas and technologies that are collectively building the UK’s ability in this field.

The UK is also becoming adept at deploying novel robotics and AI solutions in another critical industry characterised by hazardous environments – nuclear decommissioning. Bodies such as the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, Sellafield Ltd, and AWE Nuclear Security Technologies are all part of RAICo for this purpose and have either completed multiple successful robotics deployments at their sites, or are actively seeking opportunities to do so in the very near future. Building our robotics and AI capability in nuclear decommissioning is vital because what works in this field can potentially be applied to how we support remote fusion power plant operations.

RAICo1, RAICo’s main facility in Whitehaven.

Decades of Experience

We already boast more than 20 years of experience in remote handling for fusion machines. This is largely thanks to the work of UK Atomic Energy Authority’s centre for Remote Applications in Challenging Environments (RACE) for the Joint European Torus (JET), the world’s largest and most advanced tokamak, which was designed to study fusion in conditions approaching those needed for a power plant. Combining this experience with lessons from robotics in other hazardous environments such as decommissioning puts us in a very strong position to develop new robotics solutions fit for the coming generation of commercial fusion machines.

But unlike nuclear decommissioning – where the science is well understood and robots must be adapted to environments originally designed for humans – fusion engineering offers a rare opportunity for roboticists to get in at the ground floor. Here, they can collaborate with fusion machine designers from the outset, ensuring that robots and operational environments are developed in tandem, each shaped by the needs of the other. That’s what makes this facet of our clean energy future so exciting for anyone working in robotics.

A National Collaboration in Action

Doing so isn’t a job any single organisation can deliver. Real-world progress must be driven by collaborative approaches. Fusion research organisations such as the UK Atomic Energy Authority and UK Industrial Fusion Solutions, government bodies; robotics experts at world-class UK universities, and advanced technology and engineering firms across the supply chain must all work in lockstep to determine, develop and deploy the robotic systems fusion energy demands. That is exactly what is happening at RAICo.

The Clean Energy Industries Sector Plan highlights an opportunity the UK is grabbing with both hands. Fusion energy’s future and this country’s leadership in it, will partly be shaped by how successfully we integrate robotics into its core infrastructure. That means expanding our knowledge through robotics research and taking the learnings from deploying robots in nuclear decommissioning forward as a critical input for designing how we operate and maintain the power plants of the future.

The government’s Modern Industrial Strategy recognises that the UK is uniquely placed to bring these worlds together and turn a bold clean energy ambition into an expertly engineered, robotic reality. For RAICo, there could hardly be a clearer mandate, or a more exciting time to deliver.

– Dr Kirsty Hewitson, director, RAICo.