Professor Tim Tinsley prefers not to use the label of nuclear waste, instead referring to "legacy material". And it's not hard to see why, given the projects currently taking place to extract radionuclides from the material for use in pioneering treatments for cancer. It is also providing a new source of power and heat for spacecraft.

Tinsley, Professor of Space Nuclear Power at the University of Leicester and Account Director for Space and Radioisotopes at the National Nuclear Laboratory in the UK, joins host Alex Hunt to give details on the life-saving and space-exploring projects and  explains what value there is hidden within what has long just been seen as a problem.

With the promising early stage clinical trials, and the plans to provide power for a mission to Mars in 2028,  the newly discovered value in the legacy material is one of the factors which may be taken into account in plans for the safe longterm disposal of the material. There could yet be future discoveries that more of the material could become valuable in the years ahead, so, suggests Tinsley, being able to dispose of the material in a form that it is retrievable at minimal cost might be a good idea.

Also this month, there is a report on the gathering of leaders and senior government representatives at the first-of-its-kind Nuclear Energy Summit in Brussels, including snippets of what the IAEA's Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi and co-host Belgian PM Alexander de Croo had to say. Plus Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, French President Emmanuel Macron and COP29 host Azerbaijan's Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov.

Key links to find out more:
World Nuclear News
Leaders commit to 'unlock potential' of nuclear
Nuclear Energy Summit Declaration
National Nuclear Laboratory
University of Leicester
Nuclear Energy Summit

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Episode credit:  Presenter Alex Hunt. Co-produced and mixed by Pixelkisser Production