Research Area: Structural Engineering PI: Dr Mahmoud Mostafavi Partners: 18 Partners across Europe including VTT Finland, EDF Group, Framatome, and CEA Funders: EU Contact details: M.Mostafavi@bristol.ac.uk Project Website: http://nugenia.org/portfolio_item/atlas/ The Challenge There are 15 nuclear reactors in the UK and many more around Europe. Many of these reactors have been or will be working past […]
Research Area: Structural Engineering PI: Prof. David Knowles Partners: EDF Energy Funders: EDF Energy, EU Contact details: c.simpson@bristol.ac.uk; abdullah.mamun@bristol.ac.uk; z.zhang@bristol.ac.uk The Challenge Materials in nuclear power plants operate in extreme conditions (high temperatures and stresses) over lifespans that extend for many decades. The current generation of advanced gas cooled reactor plants have been in service […]
Research Area: Waste and Fuel Management PI: Prof. Thomas Scott, University of Bristol Partners: Sellafield Ltd. Contact details: Kate Wyness, kw14747@bristol.ac.uk The Challenge Currently there are two legacy storage pond facilities based in Sellafield, Cumbria, the largest decommissioning and processing plant in the UK. These facilities were originally built to handle waste from the 1950’s plutonium […]
Research Area: Waste and Fuel Management PI: Dr Sophie Rennie Contact details: Sophie.Rennie@bristol.ac.uk The Challenge A key problem facing the nuclear industry is the safe and efficient long-term storage of nuclear fuel. The long-lived radiation fields that result from highly radioactive fission products require spent nuclear fuel to be stored over timescales of tens of […]
Research Area: Waste and Fuel Management PI: Dr Chris Jones Contact details: cj0810@bristol.ac.uk The Challenge As of 2013 the UK currently stores 120,000 tonnes of Intermediate Level Waste (ILW) nationwide, with a further 190,000 tonnes predicted from decommissioning existing sites. This waste is reprocessed prior to storage in 500 litre stainless steel drums backfilled with […]
Research Area: Waste and Fuel Management PI: Mr Haris Paraskevoulakos Partners: Diamond Light Source Contact details: cp13846@bristol.ac.uk The Challenge Within the UK, nuclear waste is classified according to the levels of radioactivity in three groups: High Level Waste (HLW), Intermediate Level Waste (ILW) and Low Level Waste (LLW). ILW mostly consists of metallic fragments arisen […]
Research Area: Waste and Fuel Management PI: Dr Jaap Velthuis Contact details: Jaap.Velthuis@bristol.ac.uk The Challenge A lot of nuclear waste has been stored in drums and filled with concrete. Measuring the contents of small waste drums and of large volume nuclear waste packages, such as large spent fuel casks and large concrete waste packages with […]
Research Area: Waste and Fuel Management PI: Dr Chris Hutson Partners: Sellafield Contact details: Chris.Hutson@bristol.ac.uk The Challenge Decommissioning legacy nuclear facilities requires innovative characterisation technologies due to extreme levels of radioactive hazard, which destroys or saturates conventional detectors. Such technologies will be required to map multiple sources of radioactivity in facilities which have small access […]
Research Area: Waste and Fuel Management PI: Prof. Joe Quarini Partners: Agbar Environment Contact details: Joe.Quarini@bristol.ac.uk The Challenge One of the important aspects of nuclear decommissioning is minimising the resultant contaminated volumes. The use of water, acids, organic solvents in cleaning contaminated equipment results in difficult/embarrassing to handle volumes of active effluent streams. The problem […]
Research Area: Waste and Fuel Management PI: Dr Natalie Lord Funders: Posiva Oy, SKB Contact details: Natalie.Lord@bristol.ac.uk Project website: https://southwestnuclearhub.ac.uk/2017/12/04/looking-deep-into-the-future-for-radioactive-waste-disposal/ The Challenge Researchers in Geographical Sciences at University of Bristol have looked deep into the future with their Earth system models to assess the state of the globe over the course of the next million […]
