 After a decade of not being able to say it without being hissed at, it seems you can't go anywhere without hearing the word nuclear again these days.
Whether it be test explosions in North Korea, or reintroducing it into the UK's energy mix, it seems to be flavour of the month. So putting MAD to one side, once again we find ourselves in need of reopening the thorny issue of nuclear waste disposal.
I remember reading about a company a few years back which embedded nuclear waste in rock which reduced the problem to where to store it, rather than the current issue of how do we store it safely.
Now according to Melody Carter of ANSTO they are looking at using this technique to immobilise 5 tonnes of plutonium waste at Sellafield saving costs of around £100 million in current waste liability.
As well as embedding waste in rock, recently a group of German scientists claimed to have found a way to speed up radioactive decay so that it is rendered harmless within timescales of just tens of years. This technique involves embedding it in metal and cooling it to a few degrees kelvin. Still, this solution has not yet convinced other researchers, as it goes against well established theory and experimentation.
I just hope now that we can have sensible discussions using the word nuclear again, and that there will also be a corresponding increase in interest in how we go about sensibly dealing with the issues it brings. It's these issues that us Brits have avoided for far too long.
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