Innovative team scoops prestigious Royal Society of Chemistry Award

Led by Leeds University and including a number of other UK universities, the partnership known as The DISTINCTIVE (Decommissioning, Immobilisation and Storage Solutions for Nuclear Waste Inventories) Consortium are winners of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Industry-Academia Collaboration Award.

The team won the accolade for delivery of research that addressed challenges associated with the continuing safe storage and disposal of radioactive legacy nuclear waste.

Members are part of a programme which links nuclear industry experts with UK academics and PhD students to roll-out of innovative solutions and train the next generation of scientists and engineers – helping the NDA to develop and maintain key skills we need to undertake our mission over the coming decades.

NDA Research Manager Dr Rick Short said:

This is a huge achievement for the team which has worked hard, bringing together a wide variety of expertise to collaborate and tackle challenges surrounding decommissioning by developing fundamental understanding of our materials and finding innovative solutions.

As well as providing funding, the NDA, Sellafield Ltd and National Nuclear Laboratory were industry partners for this programme, which was set up to support UK government strategy on nuclear decommissioning and waste management.

Receiving the award, Partnership leader Professor Michael Fairweather said:

The success of the consortium is testament to the close collaboration between academics and industry partners, not only in jointly formulating the overall work programme and the individual projects within it, but also in jointly supervising the researchers and delivering planned impacts.

We would like to thank the EPSRC, National Nuclear Laboratory, Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and Sellafield Ltd for the funding that enabled us to carry out our work.