The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority

Scientists from universities around the country have started work on five major projects to research the scientific challenges associated with geological disposal of higher activity radioactive wastes. Their findings will ultimately help demonstrate the safety of an underground disposal facility.

The £4 million four-year research programme is jointly funded by the NDA's Radioactive Waste Management Directorate (RWMD) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, under the auspices of the Research Council Energy Programme.

The five projects were selected from 70 initial responses to a call for expressions of interest in 2010. Neil Smart, RWMD's Science Director, said:

"The five research projects will provide us with important information tohelp us with geological disposal of higher activity radioactive waste."

The projects, each managed by an RWMD scientist, are:

1. Corrosion processes in nuclear waste storage and Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) environments(University of Birmingham)

This is a collaborative project between researchers at the Universities of Birmingham, Manchester and Bristol and Diamond Light Source at Harwell in Oxfordshire. Using a range of techniques the scientists will build a full picture of the causes and speed of corrosion processes.

2. Behaviour of UK specific spent fuels (University of Cambridge)

The aim is to understand the long term behaviour of spent AGR fuel in a geological disposal facility and, therefore, contribute to the safety assessmentfor its disposal. Very little experimental research has been carried out in the UK on the direct disposal of spent AGR fuel.

3. Atomic and macro-scale studies of surface processes (Imperial College London)

The research will look at (i) how thesurfaces of candidate materials in an engineered barrier system behave in a typical disposal environment; and, (ii) the effect of any alteration processes on radionuclide/surface interactions.

4. Carbon 14 (University of Huddersfield)

The aim is to get a better understanding of how carbon 14 is incorporated into graphite (in a nuclear reactor core); how it will be released from the graphite and how its chemistry and microbiology influence its movement out of ageological disposal system.

5. Engineered barriers (University ofStrathclyde)

Experienced researchers will work closely with recently qualified researchers to create a new generation of UK experts in geological disposal covering civil engineering, earthsciences, mathematical modelling, geophysics and wireless monitoring.