Sunday 25 May 2014

National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) is proud to announce that the Plutonium and Minor Actinides (“PuMA”) Laboratory – a civil plutonium research facility – is now open for business and experiments are already underway.

PuMA is located in NNL’s flagship facility, the Central Laboratory, on the Sellafield site, Cumbria. It has a range of cutting edge gloveboxes (see photo) and other equipment that allow it run experiments with more civil plutonium than any other research laboratory in the UK.

As well as being able to help our customers at Sellafield deal with their plutonium, PuMA, will help NNL play a major role in the European wide ACSEPT programme which aims to come up with innovative ways of dealing plutonium and other nuclear materials.

NNL Senior Fellow and world expert, Dr Robin Taylor, commented:

“This is a big step for NNL both in terms of the service we can provide to our customers and in terms of the experiments we can carry out. It will really help develop our knowledge on what happens to elements such as plutonium under the specific circumstances found on the Sellafield site.”

Chief Science and Technology Officer, Graham Fairhall commented:

“NNL is proud to be at the forefront of nuclear technology in Cumbria. This highly specialised laboratory will help us in attracting highly skilled and highly sought after scientists to come and work in the area undertaking world class research.”