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Part 5 of 5 parts (Please read Parts 1,2,3 and 4 first)
     Following seven years of research, the team at the Glasgow was given intellectual property rights to their work. In 2016, the team started a private company called Lynkeos Technology. The company is working on its first commercial contact which is to create images of vitrified waste that is created by a new process know as GeoMelt. GeoMelt is a process by which dangerous, contaminated materials such as radioactive waste and heavy metals are mixed with clean soil, a blend of industrial minerals, and/or glass frit (A “frit” is a ceramic composition that has been fused, quenched, and granulated.) This combination of materials is then melted to create an extremely hard and leach-resistant glass product.
    The researchers have shown that muons can reveal whether or not the waste has melted uniformly and whether it contains any metallic items. The research team has been utilizing their new detector at Sellafield since October of 2018 to image waste that contains radioactive materials, including uranium. They are now working on the creation of images of the contents of waste boxes that are about three cubic yards in size.
    Researchers at the universities of Bristol and Sheffield in the U.K. and the Warsaw Technical University in Poland are also working on muon detection systems. This collaboration is commissioning the development of a fifteen-foot-high muon detector which is constructed with resistive plate chambers. These detect the ionization of gases with metallic strips that are attached to glass plates. Several utilities in Europe are interested in testing the new detector but none of them have committed so far. The leader of the collaboration said that “It’s not easy to get on sites with nuclear waste and ask them to get their drums out.” 
    The sensitivity of debating the handling of nuclear waste makes it difficult to develop any new technology that could help. This is especially the case with respect to dealing with spent nuclear fuel. Safeguard agencies may be reluctant to adopt new technologies such as muon detection. The IAEA has stated that it does not currently use muon detection for verification of the presence of nuclear materials because “there are still limitations on its use for this purpose”. It has said that it is following muon detection technology development.
     Aymanns of the Jülich Research Centre points out that it is proper for the IAEA and other nuclear materials monitoring agencies to decide whether and when they would be interested in deploying new monitoring technology. She says that scientists can help move the process of adoption along by carrying out field tests. She has no doubt that new monitoring technology is needed. She says, “Even if you have surveillance you have to be prepared for it to fail. Maybe it will never happen but if it ever does you have to be ready.”
    Considering the huge amount of spent nuclear fuel and other dangerous nuclear waste that are scattered around the globe, the development of new monitoring technology is obviously a major priority.