Professor Bruce Hanson
- Position: Professor
- Areas of expertise: Spent fuel and nuclear materials management, Development of the next generation of spent fuel reprocessing plants, Strategy for Nuclear Fuel Cycles
- Email: B.C.Hanson@leeds.ac.uk
- Phone: +44(0)113 343 0475
- Location: 1.20 Engineering Building
Profile
- Prof. Bruce Hanson is the University of Leeds’s Leadership Chair in Nuclear Process Engineering and an Honorary Professor of Nuclear Engineering at University College London. He also holds the role of Director for Student Education in the School of Chemical and Process Engineering. Prof Hanson is Director of Nuclear.Leeds, which has over 30 affiliated Academics and over 40 PDRAs and PhDs researchers as members. He is the PI on EPSRC’s ATLANTIC programme and a Co-Director of the GREEN CDT. Previous to his appointment at Leeds 7 years ago, he spent 25+ years in the nuclear and chemical industries, across a range of functions from plant operation to research, specialising in actinide separations and treatment of irradiated nuclear fuel. Most recently, he was the Technical Authority for Spent Fuel and Nuclear Materials at the National Nuclear Laboratory, leading internal R&D programmes in this area, as well as those on reactors and fuel development. He is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the NNL. Since joining the University of Leeds in 2012, he has been or is a named investigator on 10 grants, published 16 journal/conference papers and 1 book chapter. He currently leads a research group of 4 PDRAs, 6 PhDs and manages a research budget of over £5M.
Responsibilities
- Director of Student Education
- Leadership Chair in Nuclear Process Engineering
Research interests
My research interests and areas of expertise include:
- Spent fuel and nuclear materials management
- Development of the next generation of spent fuel reprocessing plants – the processes and the technology required, both aqueous and pyroprocessing
- Recycle of nuclear materials (i.e. separated civil Plutonium & Uranium) back into the fuel cycle.
- Treatment of uranic wastes for disposal – the processes to produce a suitable wasteform.
- Long term storage of spent nuclear fuel and separated civil Plutonium.
- Strategy for Nuclear Fuel Cycles
- Economics – primarily connected to the back of the fuel cycle.
- Proliferation Risk.
Professional memberships
- Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers
Student education
Director of Student Education
Research groups and institutes
- Nuclear Leeds
- Sustainable Low Carbon Futures
Current postgraduate researchers
- Alex Fells
- Thomas Bainbridge
- Matt Jackson
- Joe Vickers
- Tom Shaw
- Mrs. Hanan Aburema
- Rohunsingh Sam
- Yifu Wei
- Dimitris Karatzas
- Michael Wahnon