Supporting the Safe Disposal of UK Plutonium
Find out how materials science at the University of Sheffield is being used to solve the problem of the safe disposal of UK plutonium.
The United Kingdom holds a substantial inventory of separated plutonium, currently standing at around 141 tonnes.
Following a substantial technical and economic review by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), in 2025 UK Government announced a decision to implement an immobilisation strategy to safely manage this inventory. The NDA will now seek to identify a preferred immobilisation technology to convert this material into a passively safe ceramic wasteform that is compatible with geological disposal, the internationally accepted option for permanent disposal of radioactive waste.
This critical engineering challenge is underpinned by the discipline of materials science, and research performed in the School of Chemical, Materials and Biological Engineering (CMBE) at the University of Sheffield is helping to support this important national initiative.
The NDA recently implemented a focussed investment in the Universities of Manchester and Sheffield to establish a Plutonium Ceramics Academic Hub, with the objective of generating subject matter experts to support technical aspects of civil plutonium disposition, better coordinate efforts across plutonium-active facilities within the academic sector through pooling of shared resource and expertise, engaging with industrial requirements through a model that includes shared supervision of PhD students, and providing underpinning data to support a justification of a chosen immobilisation technology.
Credits
The Film:
- Filming, Editing and Production: Will Armson
Funding and Special Thanks:
- We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) through the NDA Plutonium Ceramics Academic Hub at the Universities of Manchester and Sheffield (PuMaS).
- Dr Lewis Blackburn wishes to acknowledge the Royal Academy of Engineering through the Research Fellowship Scheme.
- Dr Clare Thorpe wishes to acknowledge the Royal Society for funding through the Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship.
- This research utilised the HADES/MIDAS facility at the University of Sheffield established with financial support from EPSRC under grant EP/T011424/1.
- This work was supported by the Henry Royce Institute for Advanced Materials, funded through EPSRC grants EP/R00661X/1, EP/S019367/1, EP/P02470X/1, EP/P025285/1 and EP/X52850X/1.
- Wish to acknowledge technical manager Dr Martin Stennett, experimental officer Dr Sarah Pepper, postdoctoral researchers Aidan Friskney and Latham Haigh, and the wider team at the Immobilisation Science Laboratory.