Luke Jones’ interest in the nuclear industry began with a 12-month industrial placement part-way through his chemistry degree at The University of Manchester. The work for AMEC in Warrington included projects with one of Sellafield’s effluent management facilities, the Site Ion Exchange Effluent Plant (SIXEP), and decommissioning associated with fast reactors for Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd (DSRL), an experience that brought him into contact with the nuclear sector and has influenced his studies ever since.
I became interested in nuclear through the placement, having previously not really considered it, and wanted to continue.
He opted for a radiochemistry module in his final undergraduate year before embarking on a PhD at the DCF where he is now a Post-Doctoral Research Associate (PDRA). His studies focused on the plutonium dioxide storage canisters at Sellafield, in particular the mechanisms by which gas could be generated inside the canisters.
Ionising radiation introduces a new set of challenges and obstacles to overcome experimentally, which was appealing to me. The University of Manchester has world-class research facilities in this area and a number of projects were based up in West Cumbria, near Sellafield, which I hadn’t managed to visit during my placement.
For my PhD, I was studying the effects of radiation on gases inside the canisters at the interface with ceramic oxides, inactive surrogates for plutonium dioxide. The plutonium residues have been in storage for 20-30 years and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Whilst in storage, they are required to be dry; however, a small level of moisture is still present. It is known that water will react with radiation emitted by plutonium, producing hydrogen and oxygen, my research aimed to investigate the reverse reaction and to what extent they would recombine back into water.
Plutonium dioxide is one of the products from the reprocessing of spent fuel at the THORP and Magnox reprocessing plants. Luke’s research, managed by NNL, was funded jointly through Sellafield and one of the Industrial Co-operative Awards in Science and Technology (ICASE) provided by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). ICASE funding is aimed at PhD studentships where businesses take the lead – Sellafield in Luke’s case - in arranging projects with an academic partner and ensuring the research is focused on a specific business issue. His PhD studies, which concluded in 2015, began to build a body of valuable new data and uncovered further areas for study, which he is now pursuing as a PDRA – with the added opportunity to work at an NNL active facility. Luke’s time is divided between the NNL active labs and the DCF, while Sellafield are also seeking support on researching the external chemistry associated with the stainless steel canisters used to store plutonium dioxide.
After developing highly specialised expertise through the DCF, Luke aims ultimately to deploy his knowledge in a technical capacity, spending his foreseeable future career within the nuclear industry.