Leeds University is to head a £4.2 million four-year programme to study the safe disposal of nuclear waste.
The Decommissioning, Immobilisation And Management of Nuclear wastes for Disposal (DIAMOND) consortium, involving the universities of Manchester, Sheffield, Imperial College, Loughborough and University College London, is funded by the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
A key priority is to address a growing EU-wide skills gap in the nuclear research field, through training the next generation of nuclear waste specialists. The consortium is looking for industrial partners and is also offering PhD and postdoctoral research opportunities at partner institutions.
The UK has over 20 nuclear sites and facilities, as part of its civil nuclear programme, which are managed by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA). Current estimates of the cost of decommissioning the sites and handling waste management and disposal stand at around £70 billion.
Areas covered by the programme will include legacy wastes, site termination, contaminant migration, and materials design and performance. DIAMOND will bring together skills and knowledge from a diverse range of academic disciplines, including radiochemistry, waste immobilisation, materials performance and mathematical modelling.
The scientists will work closely with the NDA and stakeholders in the nuclear industry to make sure their research addresses relevant issues. At the same time, they will have chance to experience at first hand the challenges facing the industry.
Simon Biggs, from the School of Process, Environmental and Materials Engineering at Leeds, who is leading the consortium said, “By challenging the status quo and seeking new and innovative solutions we believe this programme of research will generate real savings on the treatment and disposal of legacy waste, site decommissioning and remediation.”
Jim Young, DIAMOND programme manager, said, “The value of the consortiums approach is that projects will be co-supervised by academics with expertise in different fields of knowledge, which will enhance creativity and increase the potential for a step change technology breakthrough.”
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