we're outside the School of Chemistry at
the University of Nottingham and we're
just about to go off on quite a long
drive I'm not allowed to tell you where
we're going yet but if you look you can
see my colleague Steve little our
radioactive experts is with us so might
give you a clue
so after a long drive without chauffeurs
Steve and an overnight stay we here at
the National Nuclear laboratory on the
cellar field site that their central
laboratory and we're going to see real
radioactive elements I've never seen
them before but before that we've got
the security
so now we finally arrived in the active
lab that's the one where they handle
radioactive materials so we had to go
through security which I can't tell you
about and then we had to dress up in
these special safety clothes and I've
got these trendy shoes which again I'd
rather not tell you about so another
thing about here is they have the so
called hands in the pockets rule you're
meant to keep your hands in your pockets
which is quite difficult for me and this
is a proportion because although the lab
is very clean it's much cleaner than an
ordinary lab there is just the outside
chance that on some surface if you were
touching lots of surfaces there might be
something that was radioactive and if
you then put your hands near your lips
that radioactive particle could get
inside you and some of these elements
give out alpha particles these are
helium nuclei which don't travel very
far so if there are now clothes they
wouldn't penetrate deep inside the body
but if you get them inside you then
these elements are next to your cells
and if the alpha particle comes out it
can cause real damage okay we're here in
the central laboratory and I'm going to
show you some neptunium samples this is
neptunium in solution it's been
dissolved
and it's in nitric acid at the moment
obviously here one of the most
impressive things is the engineering of
the glove boxes which is terrific so in
my lab we use commercial glove boxes
which operate under a positive pressure
so sometimes you may have seen the
gloves stick right out from the glove
box and you have to really push to get
your arms in these are very different
because they're handling elements which
are much more radioactive there's a
greater emphasis on making sure that
these elements can't get out and
therefore they use negative pressure
glove boxes so it they suck air in so if
anything does escape from your bottle
which you're handling it will be swept
out of the glove box rather than being
blown into the lab I was told by one of
the people here that before it was made
radioactive when it would just been
built and was quite clean this was
opened up to the families of people to
come round and they filled one of the
glove boxes with balloons and I just
have this vision of a sort of party in a
glove box which I think would be really
very nice it stresses how all this
equipment is quite safe before you start
using the chemicals but once you start
using them then they are contaminated
and so you have to think of your
experiments enormous ly more carefully
than you would when you're normally
doing chemistry and everything that
comes in this part of the building has
to be carefully checked when it comes in
and again when it goes out even Brady's
camera has been checked very carefully
in and I hope it will be checked
successfully out so it is a very nice
demonstration to someone like me who's
been a safety officer adjust how
carefully you have to work with
radioactive materials yeah that there
are a sintered uranium dioxide pellets
suitable for irradiation in nuclear
reactors the people here are very
important because they're looking at the
chemistry that underlies
is the separation of the different
elements from nuclear waste when nuclear
industry started in the 1940s and the
1950s at the height of Cold War people
were producing waste without really
thinking through the long term of how it
was all going to be treated and dealt
with safely now everybody is very
conscious of the potential dangers of
nuclear waste and it is places like here
that are doing the underlying science so
that we can separate these elements in a
way that is not only safe but is
efficient what one needs to do is really
elegant chemistry minimizing the volumes
of solvents because otherwise you just
add the problem because you get
contaminated solvent and you get more
waste than you started with in the first
place the contact radiation dose from
them is very high basically you're
saying if you touch that it's bare - it
emits alpha radiation and beta radiation
from the plutonium - for one I think
that most of the work that is being done
here is dealing with waste that already
exists many people have strong opinions
about nuclear industry and nuclear power
but nobody can today that we've got all
this waste the UK has a hundred tons of
plutonium that is already been generated
and we have to deal with this safely
even if we never build another power
station and therefore this work has to
be done because if it isn't done the
problem won't go away and it will just
get worse as time gets on as drums
corrode more and more and so on and so
this is a very important part of science
which is making our world a safer place
I think of all the things that I've seen
today the thing that I liked most was
the beautiful blue color of plutonium 3
I never really thought about the fact
that plutonium salts would be colored us
all and the fact that you get this
dramatic change from a rather dirty
brown to this beautiful blue I think
it's really great I'd like to do it my
self but I don't have kit like this and
I don't have the facilities to work with
radioactive materials but it's great to
have seen it will show you more detail
of the plutonium chemistry in the
updated plutonium video which will be
uploading quite shortly and so took me
by surprise just how long it took to
drive here and the paperwork was quite
interesting but it's definitely being
worth it because it's it's quite
interesting to see that at the end of
the day this is a laboratory doing
science it's just it has all of these
labels associated with it
what do you mean whether the views
people have of nuclear power be a
positive or negative it's like Marmite
people either love it or hate it and
there's absolutely nothing in between
what I'm really interested in from a
scientific perspective because what I
see going on here is hardcore science
understanding the fundamental properties
of elements in the periodic table
I haven't been to nuclear facilities
since I was a schoolboy when I went to
visit Harwell with a group from my
school and one of the boys who didn't
keep his hands in his pockets was found
with his arms in a drum labeled
radioactive waste and there was a big
row
you