Nuclear Training Course, Royal Armouries, Leeds

A training course on the Nuclear Fuel Cycle was held at Royal Armouries, Leeds on 24-25 November 2009. The course was delivered by personnel from the National Nuclear Lab (NNL), Westinghouse and Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and was organised by Dr Jim Young as part of the training opportunities facilitated through the £4.25m DIAMOND (Decommissioning, Immobilisation And Management Of Nuclear Fuels For Disposal) university consortium, being led by Prof Simon Biggs. A total of 40 students, postdocs and staff attended the meeting, from Leeds, Manchester, Imperial, Sheffield and UCL, with 17 of those coming from SPEME. The course and evening dinner was free to attend and offered an excellent opportunity for the attendees to interact with the 9 tutors from the nuclear industry presenting the course.

Dr Dominic Rhodes from NNL speaks on the subject of mining uranium ore and offers an anecdote of his previous employment in a diamond mine in South Africa.

Sunny Phuah (PhD Imperial College) and Tim Hunter (Postdoctoral Fellow, Leeds) gets to grips with a Magnox nuclear fuel element (empty!) during one of the tutorial sessions.