• Question: does your work protect the environment? If not, would you like it to? and how could you possibly change your work to benefit the environment?

    Asked by anon-201688 to Sophia, Sarah, Meirin, George, Emily, Andy on 13 Mar 2019. This question was also asked by anon-201774, anon-201674, anon-201742, anon-201743.
    • Photo: Andy Buckley

      Andy Buckley answered on 13 Mar 2019:

      No, not really. Certainly not directly. Environmental science is important, but we can’t all do everything, and my mix of skills and interests is more about understanding the abstract, microscopic world than the one we live in. I think that’s ok!

    • Photo: Meirin Oan Evans

      Meirin Oan Evans answered on 14 Mar 2019:

      Particle physics work doesn’t really protect the environment, but we’re not damaging the environment either! We’re concentrating on science research that’s quite different to helping the environment.
      Of course it’d be nice if we could also help the environment whilst learning about particle physics, but I think this would be very hard.
      We do use a lot of electricity, since this is important for what we do, so it’d be nice if our electricity came from renewable and nuclear fusion sources in the future!

    • Photo: Sarah O'Sullivan

      Sarah O'Sullivan answered on 14 Mar 2019:

      Ultimately my work will help us know more about whats in the melted fuel at Fukushima and Chernobyl so we can make more informed decisions about it’s clean up which will help the environment around those specific areas. It’ll also help understand how fuel behaves when it’s stored for a long time which will help how we manage spent fuel in the future

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