Letters: October 2022

Representation for radiation

In his editorial (Chemistry World, September 2022, p1) Philip Robinson writes about the value of plants in the synthesis of complex compounds that, with the help of society (presumably science) ‘shape the world we live in’. Robinson briefly describes a photochemical process where the absorption of a photon by an individual molecule generates an astonishing array of chemical diversity using a limited set of transformations involving just photons, water and carbon dioxide; this perhaps is an over-simplification. Photosynthesis is certainly fundamental to the maintenance of life on planet Earth and well deserving of a place in the RSC`s list of representative groups of scientific disciplines.

In 1954 John Cockcroft published a monograph in which he suggested that radiation chemistry could be regarded as an extension of photochemistry, notwithstanding that the science deals with much more complicated processes initiated by both excitation and ionisation of a molecule. Following deformation, a resultant ionised molecule or a free radical reacts with its surroundings to generate a myriad of products that may have economic value or other uses, including that of medicine. I do not agree that radiation chemistry is a branch of photochemistry, if anything it is the other way round. However, in spite of being a principal scientific discipline in its own right, radiation chemistry has no specific group representation within the RSC listings. Instead it has been reluctantly accepted under the wing of the radiochemistry group, notwithstanding that it is a largely unrelated discipline.

Ignorance of a science that may be implicated in the origins of life itself has led to what I see as a bizarre decision by government to abandon radioactive waste to a repository deep underground, leaving future generations to deal with any unforeseen circumstance should containment fail or worse. For reasons of practicality and ethics I contend that disposal and abandonment of radioactive waste to a geological disposal facility as currently intended is both unrealistic and unnecessary. Much radioactive waste can be recycled or otherwise repurposed, and the rest can be effectively burnt in a neutron generator producing heat. Radioactive waste is an asset, not a curse!

David Bradley CChem FRSC
Liverpool, UK