WSC Senior Scientist addresses RSC / BNES Conference
Dr. Sarah Watts (Environmental Science) was recently invited to speak at a technical seminar jointly organised by the British Nuclear Energy Society (BNES, now part of the Nuclear Institute) and the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) on 23 January 2009. The seminar, the latest in a series of regular events on nuclear chemistry, was on the topic of ‘Chemistry and Safety’ and was held at Sellafield.
Nuclear site license companies are now required to assess the potential impacts of their radioactive emissions to flora and fauna as well as to humans. Sarah’s talk entitled “Calculating radiation risks to wildlife: why, how and… whatever next?” explained how this new focus on radioecology has arisen and how routine assessments are performed. She then described how WSC has also been at the forefront in developing new assessment tools in an attempt to address some of the knowledge gaps in this subject area. The need for dynamic, population and food web dose models were all explored and examples of current and proposed research projects were given. The talk generated much interest and lead to some interesting discussions. For further information on this topic, please contact biokinetic.modelling@westlakes.ac.uk.