Benchtop Zone Refinement of Simulated Future Spent Nuclear Fuel Pyroprocessing Waste.

The UK's adoption of pyroprocessing of spent nuclear fuel as an alternative to the current aqueous processing routes requires a robust scientific underpinning of all relevant processes. One key process is the clean-up of the contaminated salt from the electroreducing and electrorefining processes. A proposed method for this clean-up is zone refining, whereby the tendency of the contaminants to remain in the liquid phase during melting and freezing is exploited to 'sweep' the contaminants to one end of the sample.

Putting nanocrystals to work: from solutions to devices.

The colloidal route to semiconductor nanocrystals is extremely flexible, with a high degree of control over size, size distribution, surface passivation and internal structure of the nanoparticles. Simple chemically controlled techniques can be used to assemble these particles into dense films or other microscopic structures, suitable for photonic devices. Working with semiconductors or semi-metals which in the bulk form have low or inverted bandgaps, and taking advantage of the blue shift in the quantum confinement regime, nanocrystals can readily be tuned to the infrared wavelengths of interest for telecommunications.