HOW THE LATEST DEVELOPMENT IN NUCLEAR FORENSICS MAY HELP CLEAN UP CHERNOBYL

Contrary to popular belief, radioactive material doesn't glow. But a team of nuclear forensics experts are working on a device to make it do just that. BBC Science Focus's Noa Leach meets the scientists behind the innovative device

- THOMAS B SCOTT, PAMELA BURNLEY, EWAN WOODBRIDGE

Deep in the basement of the physics department at the University of Bristol, Dr Dave Megson-Smith is telling me about how much he dislikes wearing a hazmat suit whenever he goes to Chernobyl.

"Once you get in the field, you just start sweating," says the nuclear physicist. "And suddenly, you're far less aware of your surroundings. You're less safe."

Standing next to Megson-Smith, his colleague Dr Yannick Verbelen adds: "You're tucked into plastic and you're perspiring. It's already a stressful environment because there's radiation around and you don't want to linger too much."

As we talk in the basement, I'm getting an inkling of what that's like. Granted, we're wearing thin blue lab coats rather than hazmat suits, but the heat emanating from the large machines whirring away around us makes it easier to understand the feeling of not wanting to linger. Adding to this is the fact that some of the machines also contain tiny specks of radioactive material, brought back from nuclear sites.

Megson-Smith and Verbelen specialise in disaster response and clean-up operations, carrying out what they call 'nuclear forensics': gathering radioactive samples from disaster zones to analyse in their lab. With these, they hope to extract information such as whether the sample (usually no bigger than a grain of sand) came from fallout or a nuclear fusion reactor.

Their current focus, however, is on making it easier to identify radioactive material in disaster zones. And the idea they've come up with is to make it glow a luminous yellow-green with a new contraption that they've dubbed the 'Dark Star.'

FROM A SAFE DISTANCE