2009 Report to Government on National Research and

5.23 The Pacific Northwest National Labora<strong>to</strong>ry (PNNL) is close <strong>to</strong> the Hanford site,
which was a major USA plu<strong>to</strong>nium production facility for many decades and is
now decommissioning. Two of PNNL’s flagship facilities are the Radiochemical
Processing Labora<strong>to</strong>ry, 21 which is equipped with gloveboxes and hot cells,
<strong>to</strong>gether with a wide range of instrumentation for use with radioactive samples,
and the Environmental Molecular Science Labora<strong>to</strong>ry, which has a major
programme in subsurface science.
5.24 The USA has several synchrotron radiation sources which can be used with
radioactive materials, including SSRL (Stanford Synchrotron Radiation
Labora<strong>to</strong>ry) at Stanford, APS (Advanced Pho<strong>to</strong>n Source) at Argonne and ALS
(Advanced Light Source) at Berkeley.
5.25 USDOE recently commissioned from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)
an independent evaluation of its nuclear energy research programme (USDOE,
2008b). A common theme among the NAS recommendations was the need <strong>to</strong>
invest in research facilities that enable the Office of Nuclear Energy (ONE) <strong>to</strong>
meet its research priorities and <strong>to</strong> develop a process for prioritising, evaluating
and obtaining those capabilities. Battelle Memorial Institute and Idaho National
Labora<strong>to</strong>ry were then asked <strong>to</strong> report on the type of facilities needed for the next
twenty years as summarised by NAS (USDOE, 2008b). The facilities that ONE
plans <strong>to</strong> invest in include hot cells, materials test reac<strong>to</strong>rs including fast reac<strong>to</strong>rs
and demonstration reprocessing technologies.
Accessibility <strong>to</strong> the UK of Active Facilities in Other Countries
5.26 Access <strong>to</strong> USA National Labora<strong>to</strong>ries is difficult because they are generally not
open <strong>to</strong> collaborations, beyond USDOE-funded research, in which overseas
institutions rarely participate. In addition, for the nuclear weapons labora<strong>to</strong>ries,
there are major issues with security clearance (a US Q-clearance, rarely allowed
for non-US nationals, is generally required).
5.27 European facilities can be accessed <strong>to</strong> a limited degree through, for example, the
FP6 Actinet-6 Network of Excellence and its proposed successor, Actinet I3.
However, access through this route is very competitive, relatively limited in scale,
short term (project duration less than a year) and lacking in continuity (the last
call for Actinet-6 was in November 2007 and the first call under Actinet I3 is still
awaited). Most significantly, users accessing the facilities through Actinet have no
say in specifying the capability of the facilities or the instrumentation available.
Given these constraints, the UK could not rely on these access routes <strong>to</strong> sustain
major strategic R&D programmes.
5.28 The logistics of transporting radioactive materials make working overseas
complex and expensive. For example, it is prohibited <strong>to</strong> move fissile material by
air in the USA, so samples have <strong>to</strong> be transported by sea and road. UK groups
have moved small transuranic samples <strong>to</strong> both European and USA facilities as
Excepted Packages. The lead time is up <strong>to</strong> 4 weeks, which is an issue for
unstable materials, while the cost for a single movement is normally £1K and can
be up <strong>to</strong> £4K, depending on the material moved. Further, real time analyses of
21 http://rpl.pnl.gov/documents/pdf/rpl2008.pdf
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