#Nuclear meltdown how to

Entering the reactor to see the extent of the chaos inside means risking high doses of radiation, but when robotic tools arenвЂ™t available, this is the only option. ItвЂ™s someoneвЂ™s job and they get a high dose of radiation doing it,вЂќ says Claire. вЂњThey have guys who go into the reactor to assess the status of the fuel, which is corroding badly and creating radioactive dust.

#Nuclear meltdown how to

вЂњThe European Bank for Reconstruction and Development are bank-rolling the decommissioning operation, but itвЂ™s still down to scientists to understand how to safely remove the melted fuel.вЂќ вЂњIt costs a lot of money to tackle a project of this magnitude and in Ukraine they donвЂ™t have quite enough.вЂќ Claire explains. However, that also means navigating the challenges of a country with the second lowest GDP per capita in Europe. She and her team have been working with Ukrainian scientists to understand whatвЂ™s going on inside the extraordinary environment of Chernobyl's stricken reactor unit 4-and how it can be decommissioned safely.

Dr Claire Corkhill is a Research Fellow in the Department of Material Science and Engineering at the University of Sheffield. But ChernobylвЂ™s end was very much unplanned.

Normally this happens when the reactor has reached the end of its working life, as is the case with Magnox reactors at Sellafield on the north-west coast of the UK.

Support for refugee students and scholarsДecommissioning a nuclear reactor means safely removing all the radioactive fuel and contaminated infrastructure and deconstructing the building piece by piece.

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