Dr Darryl Messer

Dr Darryl Messer

What is your current role?

I am a consultant for the Nuclear Technologies position within the Waste management and Decommissioning group.

What is your academic/industrial background?

I did a 4 year integrated Chemistry Masters at the University of Manchester (First Class Hons.) and then studied for my PhD, still within the University of Manchester but based at their Nuclear research Facility, Dalton Cumbrian Facility on the Westlakes Science and Technology park in Whitehaven.

What are your main areas of expertise?

My PhD specialised in the radiation induced chemistry occurring in the gas phase over stored Plutonium. This involved setting up gas phase compositions over surrogate materials for PuO2 such as Thoria and then exposing them to an external radiation field to induce the gas phase and surface chemistry. I also helped develop a model which I used to elucidate the gas phase reaction mechanism for H2 and O2 recombination in these systems.

What specific tasks and responsibilities does your job entail?

I offer support and advise to customers within the nuclear decommissioning industry such as Sellafield, NNL and the NDA. This often includes the organisation and facilitation of workshops, preparation of documents, figures and outputs as well as utilising skills picked up from academia to perform literature reviews and critically analyse data.

What are your current key projects and who are your key clients?

Currently I am supporting the Sellafield Ltd PFSP Dewatering Strategy Selection process as well as ongoing support to NDA nuclear materials projects

What most excites/interests you about working at the company?

The flexibility and broad amount of different projects available. I may be working on something that relates closes to my PhD one week and then the next be exposed to a completely different part of the industry. That broadness in experience is really important to be as I want to have a comprehensive understanding of how the industry works.

Related Training Courses:

Introduction to ISO 19443 Training Course

ISO 19443 Auditor Training Course 

VIEW ALL NUCLEAR SAFETY TRAINING COURSES