Chemistry recent research funding success

Wednesday, 25 March 2015

Professor Laurence Harwood

Earlier this month Laurence Harwood, Professor of Organic Chemistry received news of two EPSRC grants in a single day. The first success was an award of £202,000 to Reading in a collaboration with nuclear scientists at the University of Central Lancashire and South Korean atomic energy scientists. This was almost immediately followed by news that a second consortium, this time with nuclear scientists from Sheffield University and South Korea, had also received funding with the Reading group being awarded a further £119,000. 

The awards will support post-doctoral researchers to carry out research into the development and synthesis of organic molecules that can selectively remove the highly problematic and long-lived radioactive elements americium and curium from waste streams produced during nuclear reprocessing; an approach for which the cutting edge science of the Reading group has gained international recognition from Europe to the United States, China - and now South Korea.

Although the minor actinides, americium and curium, constitute less than 0.1% of spent nuclear fuel, their removal opens up the possibility of operating a "closed nuclear fuel cycle" in which the vast majority of the spent fuel generated during electricity production can be reused instead of being sent to underground long-term storage repositories. This will have the effect of reducing storage time of the processed nuclear waste from 300,000 years to 300 years, as well as reducing the size and number of nuclear repositories needed worldwide, and so reduce the burden of our nuclear legacy on the environment and generations to come.