The United Kingdom made an early start in releasing nuclear energy for power generation and military purposes, and constructed many and varied laboratories and facilities around the country from the late 1940s to the mid 1970s.

It is government policy, via the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, to accelerate the decommissioning and remediation of the UK's 'nuclear legacy' sites to release them for other uses. This work is expected to take around a century, at a cost of £50 Billion.

This talk brief describes how the Radioactivity and Neutrons Group devised, set up and operated their Radioanalytical Service. I'll also talk about some of the work that has been carried out to support the decommissioning of Windscale Piles 1 and 2 and the Windscale AGR reactors and some of the interesting radionuclides that we found in the concrete and steel form these reactors.

Simon Jerome started his career at the Laboratory of the Government Chemist in 1977, working on the analysis of road fuel and North Sea oil, development of dental materials, water analysis and the measurement of radionuclides in the Thames Valley, although not at the same time. From there he joined the Central Electricity Generating Board in 1983 and analysed nuclear power station effluents for three years, gaining his Grad RSC Parts I and II in this period, before moving to AWE Aldermaston. At Aldermaston he spent two years measuring certain radionuclides in 'interesting' samples.

Simon joined NPL in 1989 and, since then has worked on the organisation of sesquiennial radioactivity measurement comparison exercises, the development of radioactive spiked reference materials, provision of environmental radioactivity measurement standards and was successful in winning contracts from the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organisation to organise comparison exercises for their network of radioanalytical laboratories. Simon is the chair of the Standing Committee of Analysts and a member of ISO Technical Committee 147, Working Group 4, both of which deal with the measurement of radioactivity in water.