£1 million of government funding has been granted to Costain to carry out a scheme which aims to cut the amount of nuclear waste needing to be stored.

Working with partners MDecon, Tetronics International and the University of Manchester, the Manchester-based Costain team will develop new ways to treat irradiated graphite from decommissioned nuclear reactors.

The project will begin in April 2015 and will last for three years.

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Funding has come from a joint £13m initiative between Innovate UK , the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to stimulate the UK's civil nuclear power sector.

Dr Bryony Livesey, Costain Head of Research and Technology, said: "Irradiated graphite is one of the key challenges in the decommissioning and radioactive waste management of legacy nuclear facilities, both in the UK and internationally.

"Graphite is a very bulky form of radioactive waste that is difficult to remove from the reactor core at the end of life. If it is removed from the core it represents a large, and hence expensive, waste stream for storage and subsequent burial.

"This disadvantage has led to the current strategy of leaving graphite 'in-situ' in shut-down reactors until waste facilities become available."

(CD/JP)