Philosophy

Our Industrial Decommissioning Revolution

We are the first generation to seek to clean up our industrial plant and wastes, and to seek to clean-up the environment.

Cleaning up the environment is relatively new, and driven by realisation that our environment is not infinite, and that human activities have a profound effect on it. Environmental constraints have forced policy decision-makers to recognise the effects of human industrial impacts. What is different about the 'Industrial Decommissioning Revolution' is that policy has shifted globally, not just in one country (although there are pathfinders and different levels of progress).

Decommissioning and waste management activity should therefore be seen as the ‘birth of a global industry’. The true nature of this enormous human endeavour, which comprises startling innovation, vibrant engineering and creative enterprise, is only starting to become apparent.

The first sector forced by policy-makers to account for, and dispose of all of its waste is the Nuclear Sector. This need was driven by a combination of security factors around nuclear materials, as well as the very harmful implications of nuclear pollution which have the capacity to render enormous tracts of land uninhabitable for decades. This makes nuclear unique as an industry sector, in the severity of its regulation, and the sector has risen to the technical, scientific, management and societal challenges presented by the challenges of decommissioning.

Other sectors close behind include Oil and Gas Sector. Hydrocarbon leakages into marine environments are the principle hazards of this industry, but there are also hazards to shipping, fishing and naturally occurring radioactive waste materials. These hazards are also drivers of the emerging policy drivers to clean-up and dismantle hydrocarbon extraction and refining facilitates and supporting infrastructure.

Other sectors where decommissioning and clean-up are growing strongly as an activity are defence, chemical plant, power stations, mines and dams. The drivers in each of these sectors are hazard reduction and habitat restoration - against a context of seeking to make all industrial processes sustainable.

There is expected to be enormous global growth in the market as more plant reach the end of their economic production. The UK, which led the original European industrial revolution, and which pioneered nuclear energy and offshore oil and gas extraction, will now have to develop its supply chains and industrial practises to decommission and clean-up. As Europe's plant are older, they are the first in line, and so developing knowledge, understanding and skills developed can be applied worldwide. That is the mission of Decommology, to apply that knowledge, understanding and skill to reduce the costs and risks and to enable better decommissioning.