• Question: what do you research

    Asked by anon-305867 on 9 Dec 2021. This question was also asked by anon-305857.
    • Photo: Luke Townsend

      Luke Townsend answered on 9 Dec 2021:

      My research is quite varied but it aims to protect the people, animals and plants (known as the biosphere) and the environment, from radioactivity. I have previously worked on understanding what might happen a long, long time into the future (10s to 100s of 1000s of years) to our radioactive waste if we bury it deep underground in something known as a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF). Right now, I’m working on what is happening to the radioactivity in the environment that came from the Fukushima disaster back in 2011.
      Both these sets of work are important and are very timely as we are currently looking to build a GDF in the UK and the radioactivity from Fukushima has now been in the environment for over 10 years so we need to understand what it’s doing and how to clean it up!

    • Photo: Caroline Roche

      Caroline Roche answered on 9 Dec 2021:

      I don’t do research myself, I help others to do theirs. Most of my projects revolve around waste management. One project was to help create a control system that could sort, package and store nuclear waste safely. It was important to work out the best method so it could be done remotely and limit exposure to the workers. Especially how best to recover the system if something goes wrong.

    • Photo: Gavin Thomson

      Gavin Thomson answered on 9 Dec 2021:

      I don’t do any research any more. I review other people’s programmes as well as think about what we need of our own.
      I did research into how some contaminants interact with soil and groundwater and how they can be broken down naturally. But that was a long time ago.

    • Photo: Tom Ross

      Tom Ross answered on 9 Dec 2021:

      I look at interactions between nuclear waste and water – really exciting because there’s all sorts of cool chemistry going on!

    • Photo: Olivia Amy Douglas

      Olivia Amy Douglas answered on 9 Dec 2021:

      I am currently involved in supporting research into emerging technologies for the decommissioning of nuclear power plants. This means that I am looking at new pieces of equipment/methods that can be used to take down the nuclear sites around the country that are no longer in operation (e.g., Sellafield). This is to help make this process as swift and safe as possible for everyone involved which will give better value for the tax payer and also ensure that no on is harmed in the process. Some of the things that come up in the research are use of drones and robotics/artificial intelligence which can be pretty cool to learn about!

    • Photo: Iona Murdock

      Iona Murdock answered on 9 Dec 2021:

      I research the chemistry of nuclear accidents and ways of preventing them

    • Photo: Rea Kozlowski

      Rea Kozlowski answered on 16 Dec 2021:

      I am trying to replace some parts in cement which are releasing a lot of CO2 during production and while being part of the cement with something more sustainable and local. The cement industry itself releases about 10% of all global CO2 and has a huge potential!
      In specific, my cement will be used for the final disposal of low-level nuclear waste (having short half-lives and come basically from schools, medicine, industry). Therefore, I will test interactions of the new cement with radionuclides to see if there is any harm for the environment.

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