Question: what's the most difficult thing you've worked on?

Alexander Cunningham answered on 14 Mar 2022:

Thanks for your question! The most difficult thing I’ve worked on is probably one of my current projects which is trying to figure out the best ways to get rid of a particular type of radioactive waste.

Firstly, this is a challenge because there are so many different ways to get rid of the waste, so there’s a lot of thinking to be done to find out which are the best!

It’s also difficult because what you do with it depends on how radioactive the waste actually is! (i.e. how much harmful radiation it is firing off). Less radioactive waste is much easier to deal with as it is less dangerous to people and the environment, so it might be possible to dispose of the waste by putting it in shipping containers filled with cement at a special nuclear waste site, or by burning it for example. Really radioactive stuff will need to be buried in tunnels deep underground, but we’re still waiting on this place to be built. So for now the best option might just be storage.

All this aside, the project would be far less interesting if it wasn’t so challenging!