Neil Willey's Outputs (53)

Improved soil-to-plant transfer factors for 99Tc and 79Se in natural and agricultural ecosystems (2025)
Journal Article

Geological Disposal Facilities (GDFs) are the preferred option for the disposal of high- and medium-level nuclear waste but environmental assessments for GDFs are complex. Models of transfer into the biosphere for radioisotopes that occur in nuclear... Read More about Improved soil-to-plant transfer factors for 99Tc and 79Se in natural and agricultural ecosystems.

Does it run in the family? - Improving radiological risk assessment in the coastal environment using taxonomic and phylogenetic perspectives in macroalgae species (2024)
Journal Article

Marine macroalgae are widely used indicator species for monitoring environmental radioactivity. Empirical studies have demonstrated a range in radionuclide transfer coefficients, or concentration ratios (CRs), between taxonomic groups, however the CR... Read More about Does it run in the family? - Improving radiological risk assessment in the coastal environment using taxonomic and phylogenetic perspectives in macroalgae species.

Energy harvesting from plants using hybrid microbial fuel cells; potential applications and future exploitation (2024)
Journal Article

Microbial Fuel Cells (MFC) can be fuelled using biomass derived from dead plant material and can operate on plant produced chemicals such as sugars, carbohydrates, polysaccharides and cellulose, as well as being “fed” on a regular diet of primary bio... Read More about Energy harvesting from plants using hybrid microbial fuel cells; potential applications and future exploitation.

Enhancing radiological monitoring of 137Cs in coastal environments using taxonomic signals in brown seaweeds (2023)
Journal Article

With the rapidly expanding global nuclear industry, more efficient and direct radiological monitoring approaches are needed to ensure the associated environmental health impacts and risk remain fully assessed and undertaken as robustly as possible. C... Read More about Enhancing radiological monitoring of 137Cs in coastal environments using taxonomic signals in brown seaweeds.

Radioactivity in future phosphogypsum: New predictions based on estimates of ‘Peak P’ and rock phosphate resources (2022)
Journal Article

Global food supplies currently depend on producing inorganic P fertilisers from a finite reserve of rock phosphate (RP). P fertilisers are themselves significant pollutants but their production from RP also leaves a phosphogypsum (PG) by-product that... Read More about Radioactivity in future phosphogypsum: New predictions based on estimates of ‘Peak P’ and rock phosphate resources.

Developmental, morphological and physiological traits in plants exposed for five generations to chronic low-level ionising radiation (2020)
Journal Article

The effects of ionising radiation (IR) on plants are important for environmental protection but also in agriculture, horticulture, space science, and plant stress biology. Much current understanding of the effects of IR on plants derives from acute h... Read More about Developmental, morphological and physiological traits in plants exposed for five generations to chronic low-level ionising radiation.

Towards solving a scientific controversy – The effects of ionising radiation on the environment (2019)
Journal Article

Moving radiation protection on from the limitations of empirical concentration ratios (2019)
Journal Article

Radionuclide activity concentrations in food crops and wildlife are most often predicted using empirical concentration ratios (CRs). The CR approach is simple to apply and some data exist with which to parameterise models. However, the parameter is h... Read More about Moving radiation protection on from the limitations of empirical concentration ratios.

Predicting the effects of low dose-rate ionizing radiation on redox potential in plant cells (2019)
Book Chapter

During exposure of cells to acute high dose-rate ionizing radiation (IR), oxidants from the radiolysis of water can overwhelm antioxidant systems. Protecting flora from the effects of IR released from a nuclear industry of increasing global significa... Read More about Predicting the effects of low dose-rate ionizing radiation on redox potential in plant cells.

Ionizing radiation, higher plants, and radioprotection: From acute high doses to chronic low doses (2018)
Journal Article

© 2018 Caplin and Willey. Understanding the effects of ionizing radiation (IR) on plants is important for environmental protection, for agriculture and horticulture, and for space science but plants have significant biological differences to the anim... Read More about Ionizing radiation, higher plants, and radioprotection: From acute high doses to chronic low doses.

Chernobyl; The disaster zone becomes a laboratory (2017)
Journal Article

Zapping plants with radiation might not initially appear useful, however Prof Neil Willey from the University of the West of England monitors the responses of plants under conditions similar to those at the infamous Chernobyl site, and for good reaso... Read More about Chernobyl; The disaster zone becomes a laboratory.

An extended dose-response model for microbial responses to ionizing radiation (2017)
Journal Article

© 2017 Siasou, Johnson and Willey. An understanding of the environmental toxicology of ionizing radiation (IR) is needed because nuclear power production is expanding and there is increasing pressure to build nuclear waste repositories. The effects o... Read More about An extended dose-response model for microbial responses to ionizing radiation.

Environmental Plant Physiology (2015)
Book

Environmental Plant Physiology focuses on the physiology of plant-environment interactions, revealing plants as the key terrestrial intersection of the biosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere and geosphere. It provides a contemporary understanding of the... Read More about Environmental Plant Physiology.

Inter-Taxa differences in iodine uptake by plants: Implications for food quality and contamination (2015)
Journal Article

© 2015 by the authors. Although iodine is not essential for plants, they take it up readily and, in foodchains, are significant sources of iodine for organisms with an essential requirement for it. During several nuclear accidents radioiodine has bee... Read More about Inter-Taxa differences in iodine uptake by plants: Implications for food quality and contamination.

Making the most of what we have: Application of extrapolation approaches in radioecological wildlife transfer models (2015)
Journal Article

© 2015 The Authors. We will never have data to populate all of the potential radioecological modelling parameters required for wildlife assessments. Therefore, we need robust extrapolation approaches which allow us to make best use of our available k... Read More about Making the most of what we have: Application of extrapolation approaches in radioecological wildlife transfer models.

Thai visitors’ expectations and experiences of explainer interaction within a science museum context (2015)
Journal Article

© The Author(s) 2015. In Western literature, there is evidence that museum explainers offer significant potential for enhancing visitors’ learning through influencing their knowledge, content, action, behaviour and attitudes. However, little research... Read More about Thai visitors’ expectations and experiences of explainer interaction within a science museum context.

Using research-based learning to enhance doctoral skills development (2014)
Journal Article

Soil to plant transfer of radionuclides: Predicting the fate of multiple radioisotopes in plants (2014)
Journal Article

Predicting soil-to-plant transfer of radionuclides is restricted by the range of species for which concentration ratios (CRs) have been measured. Here the radioecological utility of meta-analyses of phylogenetic effects on alkali earth metals will be... Read More about Soil to plant transfer of radionuclides: Predicting the fate of multiple radioisotopes in plants.

A new approach to predicting environmental transfer of radionuclides to wildlife: A demonstration for freshwater fish and caesium (2013)
Journal Article

The application of the concentration ratio (CR) to predict radionuclide activity concentrations in wildlife from those in soil or water has become the widely accepted approach for environmental assessments. Recently both the ICRP and IAEA have produc... Read More about A new approach to predicting environmental transfer of radionuclides to wildlife: A demonstration for freshwater fish and caesium.

Ion-brew: Clarifying the influences on plant ionomes (2012)
Journal Article