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Science on Tap to discuss overcoming challenges in the nuclear fuel cycle

July 17, 2018

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Suzanne Bart, a Purdue University professor of inorganic chemistry, will lead the next installment of Science on Tap, with a focus on overcoming challenges in the nuclear fuel cycle.

The talk, “Overcoming Challenges in the Nuclear Fuel Cycle: Some f-ing Sweet Science,” will take place at 6 p.m. Thursday (July 19) on the top floor of Lafayette Brewing Company, 622 Main St., Lafayette. The talk is free and open to those 21 and older.

Nuclear power offers an efficient, carbon-neutral solution to fossil fuel-based energy forms. The fuels that run these nuclear reactors rely on some of the heaviest elements on the Periodic Table, including uranium and thorium. After their lives in reactors, these highly engineered materials turn into a complex mixture of heavy elements, preventing convenient processing, recycling or re-use. Bart’s group aims to understand the fundamental physical and chemical properties of these elements, as well as their safe handling, to be able to design new separations strategies for spent nuclear fuels.

Bart received her master’s and doctoral degrees from Cornell University. She was previously a postdoctoral fellow at Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.

Science on Tap, led by graduate students Elizabeth Phillips, Matthew Pharris and Emma Lendy, provides Purdue faculty and collaborating researchers the opportunity to share research activities in an informal setting with presentations designed to appeal to a more general audience. Attendance at the event has averaged 80 during the program’s first five years.

The Department of Chemistry is part of Purdue’s College of Science.  

Writer: Kelsey Schnieders Lefever, kschnied@purdue.edu

Source: Matthew Pharris, mpharris@purdue.edu

Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907 (765) 494-4600

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