23 June 2008

UNSW’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, in the Faculty of Engineering, has formed a partnership with the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) to tackle major environmental degradation challenges.

The School has recently entered into a new strategic agreement with ANSTO under which the government nuclear research organisation will partially fund a Postdoctoral Research Fellow within the School for two years, with a possible extension to a third year.

Dr Richard Collins, a senior research associate with the UNSW Water Research Centre based within the School, has been appointed to the new UNSW-ANSTO Research Fellow position. Dr Collins is a soil geochemist with a strong background in nuclear-related research and collaborative work. Since 2005, Dr Collins has been working with a team of researchers from UNSW and other universities to reduce the discharge of contaminants from acid sulfate soils into NSW coastal waters.

The new position is expected to facilitate research collaboration between ANSTO’s Institute for Environmental Research (IER) and the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Both organisations share a focus on key research areas - in particular a number of environmental degradation problems - and two major research activities have been proposed.

The first, related to the IER’s “Radwaste” project, involves research into the environmental aspects of nuclear operations, focusing on radioactive waste, migration of radionuclides (atoms with unstable nuclei) and impacts on the environment.

A second, broader activity involves using a range of nuclear techniques to address environmental issues such as acid sulfate soils, urban polluted soils and sediments, groundwater transport of contaminants and mine site rehabilitation.

Caption info: (l to r) Dr Tim Payne, Project Leader, Radwaste Program, ANSTO; Dr Richard Collins, UNSW-ANSTO Research Fellow; Prof John Dodson, Director, IER; Prof Graham Davies, Dean of Engineering, UNSW; Prof David Waite, Head of School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.